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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. 



PRINTED BY R. CLAY, LONDON. 
FOR 

MACMILLAN & CO. Cambridge. 

HontJOtt: GEORGE BELL. 

©Ufelttt: HODGES AND SMITH. 

©WnimtSi) : EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 

©lasgotD: JAMES MACLEHOSE. 

©IforO: J. H. PARKER. 



THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS 



FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A. 

CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLN'S INN, 
AND PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. 



II s'en faut peut-etre que le christianisme, a cette heure qui nous paratt 
si avancee, ait produit dans la conscience et dans la vie de l'humanite toutes 
ses applications, ait exprime toute sa pensee, ait dit son dernier mot. Dans 
un sens, il a tout dit des l'abord ; dans un autre sens, il a beaucoup a 
dire encore, et le monde ne finira que quand le christianisme aura tout 
dit. — Vinet. 



MACMILLAN & CO 
1853. 



TO 

ALFKED TENNYSON, ESQ. 

My dear Sir, 

I have maintained in these Essays that a 
Theology which does not correspond to the deepest 
thoughts and feelings of human beings cannot be 
a true Theology. Your writings have taught me 
to enter into many of those thoughts and feelings. 
Will you forgive me the presumption of offering 
you a book which at least acknowledges them 
and does them homage ? 

As the hopes which I have expressed in this 
volume are more likely to be fulfilled to our chil- 
dren than to ourselves, I might perhaps ask you 
to accept it as a present to one of your name, in 
whom you have given me a very sacred interest. 
Many years, I trust, will elapse, before he knows 
that there are any controversies in the world into 



VI DEDICATION. 

which he has entered. Would to God that in a 
few more he may find that they have ceased ! At 
all events, if he should ever look into these Essays, 
they may tell him what meaning some of the 
former generation attached to words, which will 
be familiar and dear to his generation, and to those 
that follow his, — how there were some who longed 
that the bells of our churches might indeed 

King out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

Believe me, 

My dear Sir, 
Yours very truly and gratefully, 

P. D. Maurice. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

A Lady, once a Member of the Society of Friends 
who died some years ago, desired me in her Will to 
apply a small sum to purposes in which, I ' knew that 
she was interested.' It was not difficult to comply with 
the letter of this command, as she was interested in 
many benevolent undertakings. But I was aware that 
the words of her bequest had a special meaning, and 
that she intended to lay me under the obligation of 
writing, or procuring to be written, some book especially 
addressed to Unitarians. 

I have made several efforts to execute this task, but 
have never done anything which gave me the least 
satisfaction. A mere controversial work I felt that I 
could not compose. Such works, so far as my ex- 
perience has gone, do little else than harm to those 
who write, and to those who read them. Still it has 
been a great weight on my conscience, that I was neg- 
lecting a request so solemnly conveyed to me. 



Vlll ADVERTISEMENT. 

Some months ago I seemed to see a way in which 
I might acquit myself of the obligation. A series ot 
Discourses which had occurred to me as suitable for 
my own Congregation, in the interval between Quin- 
quagesima Sunday and Trinity Sunday, might, I 
thought, embrace all the topics which I should wish to 
bring under the notice of Unitarians. It was suggested 
by a friend that I should throw each discourse into the 
form of an Essay, after it had been preached. By 
following this advice, I have been able to avail myself 
of criticisms which were made on the sermons when 
they were delivered ; to introduce many topics, which 
would have been unsuitable for the pulpit ; and at the 
same time, I hope, to retain something of the feeling of 
one who is addressing actual men with whom he sym- 
pathises, not opponents with whom he is arguing. I did 
not allude to Unitarians while I was preaching. I have 
said scarcely anything to them in writing, which I do 
not think just as applicable to the great body of my 
contemporaries, of all classes and opinions. Nearly 
every Essay has been re- written, and greatly enlarged 
in its passage out of the sermon state. Two were 
originally composed in their present form. 

Though I have printed the Essays one after another, 



ADVEETISEMENT. IX 

before the whole work was completed, that I might be 
compelled to perform a task which I had deferred so 
long, I cannot ask for any toleration on the plea of haste. 
The book expresses thoughts which have been working 
in my mind for years ; the method of it has not been 
adopted carelessly ; even the composition has undergone 
frequent revision. No labour I have been engaged in 
has occupied me so much, or interested me more deeply. 
I hope it may be the means of leading some to a far 
higher knowledge than their guide has ever attained. 

May 24, 1853. 



CONTENTS. 



TAGE 

ESSAY I.— On Charity 1 

II.— On Sin 19 

III. — On the Evil Spirit 'Si 

IV. — On the Sense of Righteousness in Men, and 

their Discovery of a Redeemer ... 56 

V. — On the Son of God 77 

VI. — On the Incarnation 99 

VII. — On the Atonement 128 

VIII. — On the Resurrection of the Son of God 

from Death, the Grave, and Hell . . 151 



Xll CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

ESSAY IX.— On Justification by Faith 188 



X. — On Kegeneration 213 

XL— On the Ascension of Christ 251 

XII.— On the Judgment Day 284 

XIII. — On Inspiration 314 

XIV. — On the Personality and Teaching of the 

Holy Spirit 348 

XV. — On the Unity of the Church 375 

XVI. — On the Trinity in Unity 403 

Conclusion — On Eternal Life and Eternal Death . . 427 



ERRATA. 

Page 23, line 18, for dies read lies. 

301, — 14, for Second Epistle, read First Epistle. 



ESSAY I. 



ON" CHARITY. 



St. Paul says, ' Though I have all faith, so that I 
could remove mountains, and have not Charity, I am 
nothing.' 

Many a person in this day has exclaimed, when he 
has heard these words, ' If the Apostle Paul always 
adhered to that doctrine, how readily one would listen to 
him — what sympathy one would have with him ! For 
this one moment he confesses how poor all those dogmas 
are on which he dwells elsewhere with so much of theo- 
logical refinement ; the faith which he told the Romans 
and Galatians was necessary and able to save men from 
ruin, shrinks here to its proper dimensions, and in com- 
parison of another excellence is pronounced to be good 
for nothing. It is for divines to defend his consistency 
if they can ; we are only too glad to accept what seems 
to us a splendid inconsistency, in support of a principle 
which we feel to be all-important, and which it is the 
great work of our age to proclaim.' 

B 



Z FALSE MODE OF DEFENDING ST. PAUL. 

I have been often tempted to answer a person who 
spoke thus, in a way which, I am sure, was foolish and 
wrong. I have said to him, ' The Charity which the 
Apostle describes is not the least that tolerance of 
opinions, that disposition to fraternize with men of 
all characters and creeds, which you take it to be. His 
nomenclature is spiritual and divine, yours human and 
earthly. If you could look into the real signification of 
this chapter, you would not find that you liked it much 
better than what he says of Faith elsewhere.' 

This language is impertinent and unchristian. We 
fall into it partly because we look upon objectors as 
opponents whom it is desirable to silence ; partly because 
we suppose that there is a spurious Charity prevalent in 
our time, which must be carefully distinguished from 
real and divine Charity ; partly because we think that 
the interests of Theology demand a more vigorous 
assertion of those distinctive Christian tenets which are 
confounded in a vague, all-comprehending, philosophical 
Theory. I have felt all these motives and arguments 
too strongly not to sympathise with those who are 
influenced by them. It is in applying them to practice 
that I have found how much I had been misled by 
them. 

1. I know I can silence an objector by telling him the 
Bible means something altogether different from that 
which it appears to mean. He does not care to discuss 
any question with me when he has understood that 



COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE BIBLE. 3 

there is no medium of communication between us ; that 
I am speaking a language which I cannot interpret to 
him. He believes the book I honour above all others 
to be a book of Cabala, and throws it away accordingly. 
And if I afterwards refer to any passages of beautiful 
human morality which I think may impress him in its 
favour, he tells me plainly, that I know the intention of 
those passages is not what the words indicate, and that 
the conscience of mankind responds to their apparent 
not to their real signification. 

I have done this service to him by that method of 
mine. What have I done to the Bible ? I have prac- 
tically denied that its language is inspired, and that the 
truth which the language expresses is divine. I must 
suppose that inspired language is the most inclusive 
and comprehensive of all language ; that divine truth 
lies beneath all the imperfect forms of truth which men 
have perceived, sustaining them, not contradicting them. 
If a particular temper or habit characterises a man, or 
a country, or an age, the believer in a Revelation would 
naturally conclude that there must be an affinity between 
this temper or habit, and some side of that revelation ; — 
he would search earnestly for the point of contact 
between them, and rejoice when he recognised it. He 
might find the temper or habit in question often confused, 
often feeble, often evil. His whole hope of removing the 
confusion, strengthening the feebleness, counteracting the 
evil, would lie in the power which seemed to be given 



4 HOW TO MEET THE TEMPER OF AN AGE. 

liim of connecting it with that wider and deeper principle 
from which it had been separated. Every, even the 
slightest, inclination on the part of persons who were 
habitually suspicious of that which he held to be truth, 
to acknowledge a portion of it as bearing upon their 
lives, he would eagerly and thankfully hail. So far from 
complaining of them because they fixed upon a certain 
aspect of the revelation, remaining indifferent or sceptical 
about every other, he would consider this a proof that 
they were taking hold of it in the most natural and sin- 
cere way, — accepting what in their state of mind they 
could most practically apprehend and use. If another 
side of it was for them lying in shadow, he might, — pro- 
vided he had any clear conviction that Grod has His 
own way of guiding His creatures, — be content that they 
should not, for the present, try to bring that within the 
range of their vision. At all events, he would feel that 
his work was clearly marked out for him. In this, as in 
all other cases, he could not hope to arrive at the un- 
known^ except through that which is perceived however 
partially. He would not quench the light under pretence 
that it is merely torch-light, lest he, as well as those who 
are walking by it, should be punished with complete 
darkness. If I have not acted upon these maxims, I am 
certain it was because my faith in God's revelation was 
weak, not because it was strong. 

2. I do not deny that there is much in the feelings we 
of this age associate with the word Charity, which is 



CHARITY IN CUE DAY. O 

artificial, phantastical, morbid. Most will admit this 
about the charity of others, — some about their own. I 
do not deny that the talk about charity, the sensation 
about it, even the attempt to practise it, is compatible 
with a vast amount of uncharitableness. That also will 
be generally admitted ; perhaps, the confession is more 
sincere than any other which we make. It is equally 
true that each school has its own notion of charity, that 
the definitions of it are utterly unlike, that the limita- 
tions of it are most various and most capricious. The 
point to be considered is, whether all these diversities, 
subsisting under a common name, do not prove, more 
than anything else, the tendency of the time in which 
they are found, — the direction in which our thoughts 
are all consciously or unconsciously moving. The 
conscience of men, asleep to many obligations, is awake 
upon this. All confess that they ought to have charity 
of some kind. Portraits of dry, hard, cold-hearted men, 
who have in them, possibly, a sense of justice and right, 
are sure to produce a revolting, as from something pro- 
foundly and essentially evil, even in spectators who can 
look upon great criminals with half-admiration as 
gigantic and heroical. The formalist has become almost 
the name for reprobation among us ; that from which, 
every one shrinks himself, and which he attributes to those 
whom he execrates most, precisely because it denotes the 
man in whom charity has been sacrificed to mere rule. 
The more you look into the discussions of different 



6 WHY WE SHOULD BEGIN FROM IT. 

parties in our time, the more yon will find that, how- 
ever narrow and exclusive they may be, union — com- 
prehension — is their watchword. They are separating 
from their fellows because they are not sufficiently com- 
prehensive ; they are striving to break down some fence 
which other people have raised, if they are making a 
thicker and more thorny one themselves. 

If there is any truth in the observations which I made 
under the last head, these indications might appear 
almost to determine the course which a divine in the nine- 
teenth century should follow, even though by adopting 
it he departed from the precedents of other times. The 
same motive which might have led one of the Reformers to 
speak first on Faith, — because all men, whether Roman- 
ists or Anti-Romanists, in some sense acknowledged the 
necessity of it, — should incline a writer in this day to begin 
his moral or theological discourses from Charity, at what- 
ever point he may ultimately arrive. But there would 
be no deviation from precedent. The doctors of the 
first ages, and of the middle ages, continually put forth 
the Divine Charity as the ground upon which all things 
in heaven and earth rest, as the centre round which they 
revolve. And this was done not merely by those who 
were appealing to human sympathies, but in scientific 
treatises. What is more to our purpose, the compilers of 
our Prayer-book, living at the very time when faith 
was the watchword of all parties, thought it wise to 
introduce the season of Lent with a prayer and an 



PRECEDENTS FOR THAT COURSE. 7 

epistle, which declare that the tongues of men and of 
angels, the giving all our goods to feed the poor, the 
giving our bodies to be burnt, finally, the faith which 
removes mountains, without Charity, are nothing. This 
Love was to be the ground of all calls to repentance, 
conversion, humiliation, self-restraint ; this was to unfold 
gradually the mystery of the Passion, and the Resurrec- 
tion, the mystery of Justification by Faith, of the new 
life, of Christ's ascension and priesthood, of the descent of 
the Spirit, the unity of the Church. This was to be the 
induction into the deepest mystery of all, the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. ' If it 
is asked what human charity can have to do with the 
mysteries of the Godhead, the compilers of the Prayer- 
book would have answered, Certainly nothing at all, if 
human charity is not the image and counterpart of the 
Divine ; if there can be a charity in man which beareth 
all things, believeth all things, endureth all things, unless 
that was first in God, unless it be the nature and being 
of God. If it is that Charity which is the ground of 
ours, it must be the source of the Divine acts, as well as 
of ours, the key to unlock the secrets of Divinity as well 
as of Humanity.' As a Churchman, I might, perhaps, 
venture to follow out a hint which rests on such an au- 
thority, and comes to us supported by such a prescrip- 
tion, without being suspected of innovating tendencies. 

3. But a strong reason will be alleged why such a 
course may have been adapted to the former days, and be 



8 INDISTINCTNESS OF THE AGE. 

unsuitable for ours. I shall be told that it was very well to 
speak of Charity, divine or human,when the importance of 
dogmas, and of the distinction between the orthodox and 
the heretical, was admitted, nay, if that is possible, exag- 
gerated ; but that now, when all dogmatic teachings are 
scorned, not by a few here and there, but by the spirit of 
the age ; when it is the minority who plead for them 
and feel their necessity ; and when the great popular 
cry is for some union of parties in which all barriers, 
theological, nay, it would seem sometimes, moral also, 
shall be thrown down, — at such a time to speak of put- 
ting Charity above Faith, or of referring to Charity as a 
ground and standard for Faith, is either to palter with 
words in a double sense, pretending that you agree with 
the infidel, while you keep a reserved opinion in your 
own heart which would repel him if you produced it ; or 
else to give up your arms to him, owning that he has 
vanquished. 

I neither disguise from myself, nor would I from 
any one else, that this age is impatient of distinctions — 
of the distinction between right and wrong, as well as of 
that between truth and falsehood. Of all its perils this 
seems to me the greatest, that which alone gives us a 
right to tremble at any others which may be threatening 
it. To watch against it in ourselves, and in all over 
whom we have any charge or influence, is, I believe, 
our greatest duty. In performance of it, I should 
always try to expose the language which is current 



DOGMATISM. 9 

among us respecting private judgment, as fostering the 
indistinctness of our minds, and as leading to the worst 
kind of dogmatism. We are always tending towards 
the notion that we may think what we like to think ; 
that there is no standard to which our thoughts should 
be conformed ; that they fix their own standard. A 
Society consisting of men, each, in this sense, a law 
to himself, is the most incredible conception in the 
world ; and yet there never was a time when the social 
impulse was stronger, or the craving for a perfectly 
united society more vehement. 

But I cannot find that I check private dogmatism, by 
being myself dogmatic. I must think that the spirit of 
dogmatism which is rife amongst us requires to be 
counteracted, if not cast out, and that I need myself to 
be delivered from it. Nor does experience teach me 
that I am likely to be delivered from it by thinking of 
the Church as the great Dogmatist. If I reverence the 
Church, I shall try to be like her, and to catch her 
spirit. I shall act over again in my individual capacity 
what she is in her collective capacity. This is no fancy 
or refinement. I see all around me men becoming 
furiously opinionated — yes, and self-willed — under pre- 
tence of giving up all opinion and all self-will to the 
judgment of the Church. Such men cannot be helping 
to reform us. They have many of our worst habits, 
and they are cultivating them strenuously by help of 
the very power which should eradicate them. 



10 THEOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Are we then to say, as so many are saying, ' Get rid 
of Theology, or make Theology less definite and dis- 
tinct, or reconstruct Theology upon individual conscious- 
ness ; so you will banish dogmatism ? ' I fancy we have 
been trying these plans somewhat diligently, and that 
they have not answered. 

When we have professed to write or talk divinity, we 
have been busy chiefly in setting forth our theories, 
notions, feelings about God. Some have grounded 
these upon Church authority, some upon deductions 
from the Bible, some upon their own experience or 
consciousness. The methods have clashed, the results 
have clashed. Still I hope and trust we shall be a 
long time before we persuade Churchmen to think 
lightly of Church authority; students of the Bible to 
confess that no conclusion can be formed from it ; men 
who have realized great convictions by hard inward 
struggles, to believe that they are good for nothing. 
May it not be that theology, considered — not as a col- 
lection of our notions and theories about God — but as 
setting forth His acts and purposes to us, would 
reconcile these methods? Might it not cure our dog- 
matism, and yet increase the definiteness of our per- 
ceptions on a great many points, on which they are 
now somewhat vague and contradictory? 

This, at least, is my belief. An objector will say, 
' How do you get this Theology of yours ? It must be 
your thought and speculation after all. It must come 



AETICLES OF FAITH. 11 

from the Church, or the Bible, or your consciousness ; 
wherein does it differ from mine or any one's else ? ' 
My answer is, — I hope it does not differ at all. I dare 
say the Church and the Bible and my consciousness 
have a great deal to do with any apprehensions I have 
of it ; how much each has to do with it, I cannot tell ; 
and for the purpose I have now in view, I do not 
think it signifies very much. The Bible and the Church 
speak to me of Charity. My consciousness responds to 
that speech, and so, I imagine, does yours. I hold this 
Charity to be the ground and centre of the Universe. 
I believe God himself to be Charity. He desires me, 
as I think, to be like Him, to have His charity. I start 
from that maxim. It is what has explained to me the 
different joints or articles of the creed which I receive 
and confess. 

I have tried to understand those articles when they 
have been interpreted to me by some doctor or apologist 
who did not start from this ground, and I frankly own 
I have failed. Their meaning as intellectual propositions 
has been bewildering to me ; as guides to my own life, 
as helps to my conduct, they have been more be- 
wildering still. But seen in this light, I have found 
them acquiring distinctness and unity, just in pro- 
portion as I became more aware of my own necessities 
and perplexities, and of those from which my con- 
temporaries are suffering. They have brought the 
Divine Love and human life into conjunction, the one 



12 UNITAKIANS OP TWO CLASSES. 

being no longer a barren tenet or sentiment, the other 
a hopeless struggle. 

I wish that I might be able to set them before some 
whom I know, as they present themselves to me. I do 
not think that I have anything rare or peculiar to tell ; 
I believe I have felt much as the people about me are 
feeling. I might therefore address myself to many of 
different classes with a slight hope of being listened to ; 
but I have one most directly and prominently before me 
while I write. 

The articles of which I shall speak are precisely those 
which offend the Unitarian ; in defending them I shall 
certainly appear a dogmatist to him, however little I 
may deserve that name from those who regard it as an 
honourable one. He either repudiates them absolutely, 
and considers that it is his calling to protest against 
them ; or he repudiates them as distinct portions of a 
creed, holding that all the spiritual essence which may 
once have been in them, has departed when they assume 
this character. I differ from those who take up the last 
position quite as much as from those who maintain the 
first ; but I have points, strong points, of sympathy with 
both, and I have profited by the teaching of both. I 
am not ashamed to say that the vehement denunciations 
of the general faith of Christendom which I have heard 
from Unitarians — denunciations of it as cruel, immoral, 
inconsistent with any full and honest acknowledgment 
of the Divine Unity, still more of the Divine Love, have 



OBLIGATIONS TO THE FIRST, 13 

"been eminently useful to me. I receive them as blessings 
from God, for which I ought to give Him continual 
thanks. I do not mean, because the hearing of these 
charges has set me upon refuting them ; that would be 
a very doubtful advantage ; (for what does one gain for 
life and practice, by taking up the profession of a theolo- 
gical special pleader?) but because great portions of 
these charges have seemed to me well founded ; because 
I have been compelled to confess that the evidence for 
them was irresistible. And I have been driven more 
and more to the conclusion, that that evidence does 
not refer to some secondary, subordinate point — which 
we may overlook, provided our greater and more per- 
sonal interests are secured, — or to some point on which 
we can for the present know nothing, and be content to 
confess our ignorance : but that it concerns the grounds of 
our personal and of our social existence ; that it is not 
to be numbered among those secret things which belong 
to the Lord, but is the root of that revelation which 
He has made to us and our children. I owe it very 
much to these protests that I have learnt to say to my- 
self : — ' Take away the Love of God, and you take 
away everything. The Bible sets forth the revelation 
of that Love, or it is good for nothing. The Church is 
the living witness and revelation of that Love, or it is 
good for nothing.' 

I owe also much to those Unitarians, who, being 
less strong in their condemnation of the thoughts and 



14 OBLIGATIONS TO THE SECOND. 

language of books written by Trinitarians, and avowing 
a sympathy with some of the accounts which they have 
given of their own inward conflicts, nevertheless hate 
orthodoxy, as such, with a perfect hatred, affirming it to 
be the stifler of all honest conviction, and all moral 
growth. I have not been able to gainsay many of their 
assertions and arguments. I cannot say that I have not 
seen and felt these effects following from what is called 
a secure and settled profession. I cannot say that the 
events of the last twenty years in the English Church 
do not convince me that it is God's will and purpose 
that we should be shaken in our ease and satisfaction, 
and should be forced to ask ourselves what our standing 
ground is, or whether we have any. I cannot dissemble 
my belief, that if we are resting on any formulas, sup- 
posing they are the best formulas that were ever handed 
down from one generation to another, or on the divinest 
book that was ever written by God for the teaching of 
mankind, that foundation will be found sandy, and will 
crumble under our feet. For telling me this, for 
giving me a warning which I feel that I need, and that 
my brethren need, I thank these Unitarians, and all 
others not called by their name, who have, in one form 
or other, in gentle or in rough language, united to sound 
it in our ears. I can say honestly in the sight of God ? 
I have tried to lay it to heart, though not as much as 
I might have done, or as T hope to do. And now I wish 
to show that my gratitude for these benefits is not 



FAILURES OF THE FIEST CLASS. 15 

nominal but real, by telling the men of both these 
classes what they have not taught me, — what I have 
been compelled to learn in another school than theirs. 

To the first, then, I say: — You have urged me to 
believe that God is actually love. You have taught me 
to dread any representation of Him which is at variance 
with this ; to shrink from attributing to Him any acts 
which would be unlovely in man. Well ! and I find my- 
self in a world ruled over by this Being, in which there 
are countless disorders : yes, and I find myself adding to 
the disorder ; one of the elements of it. My heart and 
conscience demand how this is. I want to know, not for 
the sake of a theory, but for the most practical purposes 
of life — I want to know how these disorders may be 
removed out of the world and out of me. You are, I 
am aware, benevolent men, a great many of you eager 
for sanitary, social, political reformation. That is well, 
as far as you are concerned; but is the Ruler of the 
universe as much concerned about the state of it as you 
are ? Has He done anything adequate for the deliver- 
ance of it from its plagues : is He doing anything? I 
have not found you able to answer these questions ; and 
I do not think other people find that you are able. 
Men who have to sorrow, and suffer, and work, may 
accept your help in improving their outward condition, 
but they do not accept your creed: it is nothing to 
them. Atheism is their natural and necessary refuge, if 
the only image of God presented to them is of one who 



16 NOT WITNESSES FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 

allows men to be comfortable — who is not angry with 
them, — who wishes all to be happy, but leaves them to 
make themselves and each other happy as well as they 
can. They can meditate on the world almost as well 
without such a Being as with Him. I say this, because 
it is true, and because the truth should be spoken. God 
forbid that I should say for a moment that it is true for 
you. I know it is not. I know the vision you have of 
God is consolatory to you ; that it would be a loss to all 
of you — to some, a quite unspeakable loss, to be deprived 
of it. Not for the world would I rob you of it, or of 
one iota of strength and comfort which you derive from 
it. Not for the world would I persuade you that your 
belief in a God of infinite charity is not a precious and 
divine gift. But, remember ! — infinite Charity. Charity 
is described as bearing all things, hoping all things, en- 
during all things. Any Charity which is not of this 
character, I am sure you would cast out of your scheme 
of ethics ; you would feel it could not be an ideal for 
men to strive after ; you do wish, in your own case, not 
to give barren words and phrases to your fellows, but to 
' suffer with your suffering kind.' I have a right to 
claim, that you should not think more meanly of the 
God whom you condemn other sects for misrepresenting, 
than you do of an ordinarily benevolent hero, nay, than 
you do of yourselves. It is all I ask of you before we 
engage in our present inquiry. 

You, again, who think there is some important truth in 



THE MODERN SCHOOL. 17 

the doctrines we confess, but are convinced that we hold 
the shell of it, while yon are possessing, or at least seek- 
ing for, the kernel ; and that no fellowship will ever exist 
among human beings till they have been persuaded to 
cast the shell away ; to you who support this sentiment 
by evidence, all too clear and decisive, drawn from the 
records of the controversies between Churchmen, and 
from the feebleness of their present condition ; to you who 
bid us always keep our eyes upon some good time coming, 
when such controversies will cease, and another kind of 
church will emerge out of those which you tell us are 
crumbling into dust ; to you, I say, I have asked what 
the substance is within the shell ; and the best answer 
I have got is — a certain religious sentiment — a tendency, 
that is, or bias or aspiration of the soul towards some- 
thing. And that is — what ? Is it known or unknown, 
real or fantastic, a Person or an abstraction ? It is not 
a trifle to me whether I know or not ; the world, too, is 
interested in the question. We cannot be told that our 
words and phrases are worthless, and then be put off with 
other words and phrases, which are certainly not more 
substantial. ' You have told us how divided churches 
are ; will you tell us what has prevented them from 
being wholly divided : what has kept the members 
of them from being always at war ? Has it been a 
religious sentiment — has it been a philosophical abstrac- 
tion ? Are you afraid to join with me in considering 
that question ? 



18 THE CHUECH THAT IS TO BE. 

Lastly, you look for a better day, and a united 
Church : — so do I. But I want to know whether the 
foundation is laid on which that church is to stand, 
or whether it is to be laid ; whether the Deliverer and 
Head of mankind has come, or whether we are to 
look for another? Your speculations have left me 
quite in the dark on this subject. I cannot bear the 
darkness. Shall we try if we can grope our way 
into the light ? 



ESSAY II. 

ON SIN". 

Cleegymen seem to take it for granted that their 
congregations understand what they mean when they 
speak of Sin. I am afraid some of ns do not quite 
understand ourselves what we mean by it. Perhaps, 
if we would attend more to the doubts and objections 
of others, they might assist in clearing and deepening 
our own thoughts. 

They frequently take this form : ' We find a number 
1 of crimes, outward, palpable, interfering with the exist- 
1 ence of society ; these we try to check by direct 
' penalties. We find that these crimes may be traced 
' to certain habits formed in the man, beginning to be 
' formed in the child ; these we try to extirpate by some 
' moral influences. There is scope for infinite discussion 
1 as to the nature, measure, and right application of these 
' direct penalties, and these moral influences ; as to the 
' evils which most demand either. But scarcely any one 
1 doubts that both these methods are necessary ; that 



20 ETHICS, LEGISLATION, THEOLOGY. 

' there are disorders which need the one and not the 
' other. It is different when a third notion is thrust 
' upon us, one which we can refer to the head neither of 
' Legislation nor of Ethics. 

' The Theologian speaks of Sin. What is this ? You 
1 say it is committed against God. Does God, then, want 
' anything for his own use and honour ? Does he crave 
' services and sacrifices as due to Him ? Is not doing 
' justice and mercy to the fellow-creatures among whom 
' He has placed us, the thing which He requires and 
' which pleases Him ? If not, where would you stop ? 
' Do not all Heathen notions, all the most intolerable 
' schemes of propitiation, all the most frightful inven- 
' tions and lies by which the conscience of men has 
6 been defiled and their reason darkened, and from which 
1 crimes against society have at last proceeded, force 
' themselves upon us at once ? What charm is there in 
' the name or word Christianity to keep them off, if they 
' are, as we know they are, akin to tendencies which 
' exist in all men, whatever names they bear, and which, 
' for their sak.es, need to be abated, if possible extin- 
' guished, certainly not fostered ? But, if once we admit 
' good feeling and good doing towards our neighbour 
' to be the essence and fulfilment of God's command- 
' ments, why are not the ethical and legal conceptions of 
4 evil sufficient ? What room is there for any other ? ' 

Those of us who have had these thoughts, and 
have expressed them, have probably heard answers 



THEOLOGICAL CALCULATIONS. 21 

which have satisfied us very ill. We have been told, 
perhaps, l that the Commandments speak of a duty 
' towards God as well as of a duty towards our neigh - 
c bour ; that there is no reason why He, from whom 
' we receive all things, should not demand something 
' in return; that, a priori, we could not the least tell 
' whether He would or not ; that if He did, it would 
' be reasonable to expect that He would enforce very 
' heavy punishments upon our failure, — especially if it 
' might have been avoided ; that those punishments may 
' be infinite — at all events, that we can have no reason 
' to allege why they should not be ; that if we have any 
' authority for supposing they will be so, we ought to 
' do anything rather than incur so tremendous a risk.' 

There is something in us all which resists these argu- 
ments. I believe great part of the resistance comes 
from conscience, not from self-will. There is a horror 
and heart-shrinking from the doctrine that we are to 
serve God because we are ignorant of His nature and 
character. There is a greater horror and heart-shrinking 
from the notion that we are to serve Him because, upon 
a fair calculation, it appears likely that this course will 
answer better than the opposite course, or that that will 
involve us in ruin. He who says, ' I cannot be religious 
on these terms, — it is my religion to repudiate them,' 
may not prize the Commandments very highly. He 
may look upon them merely as the words of an old 
Jewish legislator. But he will at least feel that this 



22 THE CONSCIENCE EESISTS THEM. 

legislator meant more by duty to God than his inter- 
preters suppose him to mean, nay, meant something 
wholly and generically different from this. He may not 
acknowledge the name of Christ, or may attach to that 
name quite another signification from that which we 
attach to it: but he will at least be sure that Christ 
did not come into the world to tell men that they cannot 
know anything of their Father in Heaven ; or that He is 
to be served for hire, or through dread of what He will 
do to them. 

Most earnestly would I desire that each man should 
hold this conviction fast, that he should suffer no argu- 
ments of divines or of lay people, however plausible, to 
wrest it from him. And if he does not yet perceive any 
reality in the word Sin, or in the thoughts which his 
teachers associate with it, by all means let him not feign 
that he does. For the sake of the sincerity of his mind, 
for the sake of the truth which may come to him here- 
after, let him keep his ethical or his legal doctrine, if 
he really has some grasp of it, not exchange it for any 
that has a greater show and savour of divinity. But I 
would conjure him also, for the sake of the same sincerity, 
not to bar his soul against the entrance of another con- 
viction, if it should come at some time with a very 
mighty power, because he is afraid that he may be 
receiving some old tenet of Theology which he has 
dreaded and hated. At some moment — it may be one of 
weakness and sorrow, it may also be when I am full of 



THE CONSCIENCE OF EVIL. 23 

energy, and am set upon a distinct and decided purpose 
— I may be forced to feel ; / did this act, I thought this 
thought ; it was a wrong act, it was a wrong thought, 
and it was mine. The world about me took no account 
of it. I can resolve it into no habits or motives ; or 
if I can, the analysis does not help me in the least. 
Whatever the habit was, I wore the habit ; whatever the 
motive was, I was the mover. At such a moment there 
will rush in upon me a multitude of strange thoughts, 
of indefinite fears. There will come a sense of eternity, 
dark, unfathomable, hopeless, such as I fancied I had 
left years behind me, amidst the pictures of my nursery. 
That eternity will stand face to face with me. It will 
look like anything but a picture, it will present itself to 
me as the hardest driest reality. There will be no images 
of torture and death. 

* What matter where, if I he still the same ? ' — this 
question will be the torture, all death dies in that. Yes, 
brother, such a death, that I shall gladly fly from it to any 
devices which men have thought of for making their Gods 
gracious, to any penances which they have invented for 
the purpose of taking vengeance on themselves. These 
are all natural — oh, how natural ! — there is not one of 
them which the coldest, most unimaginative man may 
not have coveted; there are few which, in certain periods 
of confused restless anguish, he may not have believed 
would be worth a trial. And why? Because anything 
is better than the presence of this dark self. I cannot 



24 HORROR OF IT. 

bear to "be dogged by that, night and day ; to feel its 
presence when I am in company, and when I am alone ; 
to hear its voice whispering to me, — ' Whithersoever 
thou goest, I shall go. Thou wilt part with all things 
else, but not with me. There will come a day when 
thou canst wander out in a beautiful world no longer, 
when thou must be at home with me.' 

This vision is more terrible than all which the fancy 
of priests has ever conjured up ! He who has encoun- 
tered it, is beginning to know what Sin is, as no words 
or definitions can teach it him. When once he arrives 
at that conviction, ' I am the tormentor — evil lies not 
in some accidents, but in me,' he is no more in the 
circle of outward acts, outward rules, outward punish- 
ments ; he is no more in the circle of tendencies, 
inclinations, habits, and the discipline which is appro- 
priate to them. He has come unawares into a more 
inward circle, — a very close, narrow, dismal one, in 
which he cannot rest, out of which he must emerge. 
And I am certain he can only emerge out of it when 
he begins to say, ' I have sinned against some Being, — 
not against society merely, not against my own nature 
merely, but against another to whom I was bound.' 
And the emancipation will not be complete till he is 
able to say, giving the words their full and natural 
meaning, ■ Father, I have sinned against Thee.'' 

I know there are some who will say, ' There is no 
: occasion for a man ever to be brought into this strange 



NEED A MAN UNDERGO IT? 25 

i sense of contradiction. He need not be thus confronted 
' with himself : he need not see a dark image of Self 
1 behind him, before him, above him, beneath him. Very 
' few people, in fact, do pass through this experience. 
' Some of a particular constitution may. But how ab- 
' surd it is of them to make themselves the standards for 
1 humanity ! How monstrous, that a few metaphysicians 
' or fanatics should lay down the law for all the busy 
1 men, the merchants, tradesmen, handicraftsmen, who 
• get through the world, and must get through it some- 
' how, without ever knowing anything of these torments 
' of conscience, internal strifes, or by whatever other 
' names philosophers or divines like to describe them ! ' 

Very well ! but were not you complaining — have you 
not a right to complain — of those priestly inventions 
which interfere so much with the peace of society, which 
interrupt the merchants and handicraftsmen in their 
employments, which beget so many horrors, especially 
such dreadful anticipations of divine punishment and 
vengeance in human hearts? Is it not your object to 
sweep these away as fast as you can, because you find 
them so troublesome, taking so many different forms, 
reappearing when you least expect them, in periods 
and countries whence they seemed to have been driven 
for ever ? Do you not complain that Christianity gives 
you no security, that Protestantism gives you no security, 
against the invasion of superstitious terrors, and against 
all the sacerdotal powers which are acknowledged 



26 WHY IT IS BETTER THAT WE SHOULD. 

wherever they exist? Do you not say that they 
interfere with the progress of science, and that science 
needs an aid against them, which neither itself, nor 
civil rulers, nor public opinion can give? Would it 
not be well, then, to look a little more deeply into 
the matter, and instead of raving at certain pernicious 
effects, to examine from what cause they may have 
sprung ? 

I tell you the cause is here. That sense of a Sin 
intricately, inseparably interwoven with the very fibres 
of their being, of a Sin which they cannot get rid of 
without destroying themselves, does haunt those very 
men who you say take no account of it. This is 
not the idiosyncrasy of a few strange inexplicable 
temperaments. It is that which besets us all. And 
because we do not know what it means, and do not - 
wish to know, we are ready for all deceits and im- 
postures. They may come in various shapes. They 
may be religious impostures, or philosophical ; they may 
appeal to our love of the outward world, or to our 
craving for mysteries ; but they will not permit us 
to be at rest, or to be acquainted with our own hearts, 
or to understand one another. All you can boast is, 
that preachers of religion have not a monopoly of these 
influences in this time ; that here, as elsewhere, there is 
unrestricted competition ; that Mormonists, Animal 
Magnetists, Rappists, take their turns with us, and 
often work their charms more effectually than we work 



METHODIST PBEACHING. 27 

ours. As long as men are dwelling in twilight, all 
ghosts of the past, all phantoms of the future, walk by 
them : I want to know, as I suppose you do, how they 
can come out of the twilight ? The passage is the same, 
friend, for them, as for you and me ; we are not of 
different flesh and blood from theirs : that within us 
which is not flesh and blood is not more different, but 
more closely akin, whatever you, in your philosophical 
or literary or religious exclusiveness, may think. The 
darkness whiclv is blended with the light must, in some 
way, be shown to be in deadly contrast with it, — the 
opposites must be seen one against the other. 

Think of any sermon of a Methodist preacher which 
roused the heart of a Kingswood collier, or of a dry, 
hard, formal man, or of a contented, self-righteous boaster 
of his religion, in the last century. You will say he 
talked of an infinite punishment which God might in- 
flict on them all if they continued disobedient. He may 
have talked of that, but he would have talked till dooms- 
day if he had not spoken another language too, which 
interpreted this, and into which the conscience rapidly 
translated it. He spoke of an infinite Sin : he spoke 
of an infinite Love : he spoke of that which was true 
then, whatever might be true hereafter. He said, 
' Thou art in a wrong state : hell is about thee. God 
would bring thee into a right state : He would save thee 
out of that hell.' The man believed the words; some- 
thing within him told him they were true ; and that for 



28 POWEK OF IT; CHANGE IN IT. 

the first time lie had heard truth, seen truth, been him- 
self true. I cannot tell what vanities and confusions 
might come to him afterwards, from his own dreams or 
the crudities of his teachers. But I am sure this was 
not a delusion — could not be. He had escaped from the 
twilight : he had seen the opposite forms of light and 
darkness no longer miserably confused together. Good 
was all good ; evil was all evil : there was war in 
heaven and earth between them ; in him, even in him, 
where the battle had been fiercest, the o#ds against the 
good greatest, it had gotten the victory. He had a 
right to believe that the morning stars were singing 
together at the news of it ; otherwise, why was there 
such music in his, the Kingswood collier's, heart ? 

If such processes are rare in our days, it is, I believe, 
because the descendants of these Methodist preachers, 
and we in imitation of them, fancy that the mere 
machinery, whether earthly or divine, which they put 
in motion, was the cause of them, — because we do not 
thoroughly understand or heartily believe that there is that 
war of Life and Death, of Good and Evil, now in every 
man's heart, as there was of old. Therefore, we do not 
speak straightly and directly to both. We suppose men 
are to be shown by arguments that they have sinned, 
and that God has a right to punish them. We do not 
say to them, ' You are under a law of love ; you know 
you are, and you are fighting with it.' 

Benevolent men wish that the poor should know 



EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 29 

more of Legislation and Ethics and Economy. I wish 
heartily that they should. But I believe that you will 
never bring them to that knowledge unless you can 
point them to the deeper springs of humanity, from 
which both Ethics and Laws and Economics must be 
fed, if they are to have any freshness and life. I do 
not think it dangerous that any man should get any 
knowledge of any subject whatever; the more he has 
of it the better. And I often think, that what is 
sincerely communicated to him of Economics or Physics, 
may bring him sooner to a right moral condition, — may 
startle him into apprehensions respecting his own being, 
sooner — than insincere artificial theological teaching. But 
yet I cannot help seeing also, that Legislation, Ethics, 
Economics, even Physical Science, may themselves con- 
tribute to the foundation of superstitions, if the man is 
not first called into life to receive them and to connect 
them with himself. I am sure, at all events, that an infinite 
responsibility rests upon us, — not to be interfering with 
other men, or to be checking their efforts, whatever 
direction they may take, — but to be calling forth, by 
that power which, I believe, we possess, if we will use 
it, the heart and conscience of men, so that being first 
able to see their Father in heaven truly, and themselves 
in their true relation to Him, they may afterwards 
manfully investigate, as I am sure they will long to 
do, the conditions under which they themselves, His 
children, exist, and the laws which govern all His 



30 SOCIAL FEELINGS. 

works. I am convinced, indeed, that the message will 
he, in some respects, different from that which the 
Methodists delivered, even when theirs is stripped of 
all its foreign and enfeebling accidents. Men are 
evidently more alive now to their social than to their 
individual wants ; they are therefore more awake to 
the evils which affect society, than to those which affect 
their own souls. To him who merely, or mainly, 
preaches about the soul, this is a most discouraging 
circumstance, — to him whose purpose is to awaken men 
to a knowledge of God and a knowledge of Sin, it need 
not be at all. 

For if God presents Himself to us as the Father 
of a Family, it is not necessary for the knowledge of 
Him, that we should force ourselves to forget our rela- 
tions to each other, and to think of ourselves as alone 
in the world. And though, as I have admitted and 
asserted, the sense of Sin is essentially the sense of 
solitude, isolation, distinct individual responsibility, 
I do not know whether that sense, in all its painfulness 
and agony, ever comes to a man more fully than when 
he recollects how he has broken the silken cords which 
bind him to his fellows ; how he has made himself alone, 
by not confessing that he was a brother, a son, a citizen. 
I believe the conviction of that Sin may be brought 
home more mightily to our generation than to any 
former one ; and that a time will come, when every 
family and every man will mourn apart, with the 



REPENTANCE. 



31 



sense of the strife and divisions of the body politic, 
which he has contributed to create and to perpetuate. 
The preaching ' Bepent, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand,' has always been the great instrument of 
levelling hills and exalting valleys. It will be again. 
The priest and the prophet will confess that they have 
been greater rebels against the law of love than the 
publican and the harlot, because they were sent into 
the world to testify of a love for all, and a kingdom for 
all, and they have been witnesses for separation, for 
exclusion, for themselves. 

My Unitarian brother ! You believe that, at least, 
respecting us. You have often told us so. And how 
is it you have no power to work on the minds and 
hearts of men, and to convince them of God's love 
when, as you say rightly, we are forgetting or deny- 
ing it? How is it, that in the last age you were 
in sympathy with all our feeble worldly tone of mind, 
and thought we were right in mocking at spiritual 
powers, and in not proclaiming a Gospel to the poor? 
Why did you talk just as we talked, in sleepy language 
to sleepy congregations, of a God who was willing to 
forgive if men repented, when what they wanted to 
know was, how they could repent, who could give 
them repentance, what they had to repent of? You 
had a mighty charm in your hands. You spoke of a 
Father. Why could you not tell men that He was 
seeking them, and wishing to make them true instead 



32 THE UNITARIAN MESSAGE. 

of false ? You did not, you know you did not. Why 
was it? I beseech you do not turn round and say, 
' You are as guilty as we.' I have said already, ' We 
were much more guilty.' Every creed we professed, 
every prayer we uttered, told us that this Father was 
an actual Father, actually related to us "by the closest, 
most intimate bonds. We did not believe much of 
those creeds and prayers ; you wished us to believe less 
than we did. Thank God, neither you nor we could 
get rid of the witnesses which He had established, or of 
the deep necessities which corresponded to them. The 
earnest preachers of the day beat us both, because they 
believed in a Father, while we repeated His name, and 
you argued to prove that He was the one God. 

And now you have, many of you, changed your lan- 
guage. You see that there is a spiritual power in the 
world; these preachers have proved there is. You 
point out powerfully and skilfully, what dull, drowsy 
priests we were who denied it. But you say that those 
who asserted it were narrow, that they are worn out, that 
spiritual power is much more widely at work than they 
supposed, that it is to be felt everywhere. Be it so — 
the lesson is most impressive ; we accept it. But why 
are you still powerless ? why cannot you stir the hearts 
of the people by your message more than your fathers 
did ? Why must it be proclaimed, not exactly like theirs, 
in the ears of comfortable merchants and dowagers want- 
ing a not too troublesome religion, — but at least in the 



NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES. 33 

ears of those chiefly, who crave for some new thing, 
not of those who are hungering and thirsting for life? 
The secret of both failures seems to me to he this. You, 
of the older school, knew something of transgression ; 
almost nothing of sin. But the transgression was of 
a rule rather than of a law ; breaches of social etiquette 
and propriety, at most uncomely and unkind habits, 
seemed to compose all the evils you took account of, 
which did not appear in the shape of crimes. Those 
who must be treated, not as members of some class of 
men, but as men, have no ears for discourses about 
conventions and behaviour ; if you cannot penetrate 
below these, you must leave them alone. You who 
believe in spiritual powers, do you yet acknowledge 
spiritual evil ? Can you speak to us as persons ? Can 
you tell me of myself; what I am; who is for me, who 
is against me? I have not found that you can. You 
have a religion for us, I know, apparently a graceful 
and refined one. It is a luxury, if we can afford it. 
But we have an enemy who tries to deprive us even of 
necessaries. Unless you can teach us how to procure 
them, in spite of him, I and my fellow-fighters must for 
the present let your religion alone. 



ESSAY III. 



ON THE EVIL SPIRIT. 



I SUPPOSE if any of us met with a treatise which 
professed to discuss the Origin of Evil, our first and 
most natural impulse would be, to throw it aside. ' The 
man must have great leisure,' we should say, ' or be very 
youthful, who could occupy himself with such a subject 
as this. After six thousand years' experience of Evil, 
and almost as many of hopeless controversy about its 
source, we may as well reckon that among the riddles 
which men are not to solve, and pass to something 
else.' 

The resolution may be a wise one, as far as it relates 
to discussions philosophical or theological upon this 
topic. Possibly the chief good they have done is, 
that they have shown how little they can do ; that they 
have proved how inadequate school logic is for the 
necessities of human life. But if we supposed, when we 
closed the book, that we had done with the question 
which it raised and which it tried to settle — if we 



INFLUENCE OF CIECUMSTANCES. 35 

thought it would not meet us again in the law-court 
and the market-place, and mix itself, most inconve- 
niently, in all the common business of the world, a 
little experience will have shown us that we were 
mistaken. We must consider the origin of Evil, 
whether we like it or not. We are debating it with 
ourselves, we are conversing about it with others, we 
are acting on some conclusions we have formed about it, 
every day of our lives. Take a few instances. 

1. A man cannot help perceiving that the climate he 
is living in has some influence on himself, and upon 
all who are about him. It is an influence which 
directly affects his body, but it does not stop there; 
through this, it acts in a number of ways upon his 
thoughts and his habits. If it affects him less or 
more than others, the difference is caused by a dif- 
ference of temperament; that must be set down as 
another influence which requires to be taken account 
of; one of which the workings are great, and in vari- 
ous directions. Add the conditions of luxury, medi- 
ocrity, or poverty into which he is born, and he is 
conscious of a whole system of agencies working upon 
him from childhood upwards, modifying apparently, 
if not determining, his wishes, conceptions, purposes. 
He has not yet calculated the effect of association 
upon him, even taking that word in its simplest, 
narrowest sense, to express his intercourse with his 
brothers, sisters, schoolfellows. If he enlarges the 



36 EVIL TKACED TO IT. 

word to comprehend all that he has received from the 
atmosphere of his country and his age, he may become 
well-nigh overwhelmed. For he begins to think what 
shape his moral code might have taken if he had been 
born within certain degrees of latitude. He asks him- 
self whether he should not almost certainly have been 
a Roman Catholic, if his lot had been cast in any part 
of the south of Europe — a Hindoo or a Buddhist, 
or, perhaps, something worse, if he had grown up in 
some of the finest regions of Asia. Without plung- 
ing into these speculations, there is the obvious and 
undeniable operation of those . who have educated him ; 
the operation of all the thoughts, feelings and habits, 
which had descended upon them from their instructors 
and ancestors. 

These are but a few items in an enormous calculation, 
a few hints which might be expanded indefinitely. What 
is the result ? As some evil tendency or temper, which 
exists in him, forces itself upon his notice, or is forced 
upon him by the criticisms and admonitions of others, 
he refers it to some of these circumstances by which he 
is hemmed in. Has he not a right to do so ? Can he 
not prove his case? That effeminate, slothful disposition 
— cannot he explain to himself clearly, what early indul- 
gence, what ill-health, what inherited morbidness begot 
it in him ? That gambling fever which is consuming 
him, does not he know where it was caught, who gave 
him the infection? That loss of truth in words and 



IN OUESELVES, IN OTHEES. 37 

deeds, cannot lie trace it up to frauds practised on him 
in the nursery ; cannot he almost fix on the hour, the 
moment, when one of them seemed to undermine his 
soul and make it false ? But for riches, would he have 
been so hard and indifferent to others ? But for poverty 
and successive disappointments, would he have "been so 
sour and envious ? 

In this way we reason about ourselves; we delibe- 
rately assign an origin to the evil within us ; can we 
refuse the advantage of the same plea to our fellows ? Do 
we not blush when we tell any man, You ought to have 
been so different ? Have not a thousand influences that 
we know acted upon him for evil, which have not acted 
upon us ? May there not have been tens of thousands 
which we do not know ? Our practical conclusion, if We 
are charitable, is, that we must make great allowances 
for him : his circumstances have been, or may have been 
very unpropitious ; may not much of his wrong-doing 
be owing to these ? Here we seem to be extending a doc- 
trine concerning the origin of evil to men generally. 

And if we are aroused to exertion -respecting ourselves 
or our brethren, it appears as if we decidedly applied 
this doctrine to practice. We fly from old associations, 
we bring new ones about us ; we assume that those 
who have erred will not be better unless we can give 
them a different education, another social position, 
direct restraints imposed by us, opportunities for re- 
straining themselves, freedom from some shackles which 



38 CONCLUSION FROM THESE PREMISES. 

appear to have operated injuriously. We do not 
scruple, any of us, to say that there are forms of 
government and forms of belief which we wish to see 
destroyed, because we suppose individual morality can 
scarcely exist under their shadow. 

From these data it is not wonderful that some persons, 
anxious to set the world right, should have generalized 
the conclusion, that all evil has its origin in circum- 
stances ; that when you make them good, you make men 
good. It is not wonderful that they should strive to 
point out how the first object may be accomplished here 
and everywhere ; how the second is necessarily involved 
in it. We must submit to be charged by them with 
great logical inconsistency, for going with them so far, 
and yet stopping short at what seems to them the in- 
evitable consequence. 

2. There is one great hindrance to the acknowledgment 
of that consequence ; perhaps to some persons it is the 
only one. They cannot persuade themselves that human 
creatures would receive so many evil impressions from 
the surrounding world, if there was not in them some 
great capacity for such impressions. They cannot sup- 
pose that the bad circumstances produce the suscepti- 
bility to which they appeal, however they may increase 
it. How, they ask, did the circumstances become bad ? 
Perhaps the elements are good, but they are ill-combined. 
What produced that bad combination ? Who put them 
out of order ? Or there is some one of them that was 



CORRUPTION OF NATURE. 39 

bad and disturbed the rest. That one must have be- 
come so, independently of its circumstances. ' There 
must,' they say, ' be some evil, which was not made so 
by the accidents that invested it ; you will be involved 
in a wearisome circle, an endless series of contradictions, 
if you do not admit this. And if you do, is it not more 
reasonable, they ask, to say that this evil belongs to the 
very nature of man, that it is a corruption of blood? 
Will not that account both for the growth of circum- 
stances and for the reaction of them upon you, upon us, 
upon all ? Confess that the infection you speak of is in 
us all, confess that we are members of a depraved race, 
and you can explain all the phenomena you take notice 
of; on any other hypothesis they are incomprehensible.' 
This view of the origin of Evil is also pregnant 
with practical consequences; it never can become a 
mere theory. It must lead all who hold it to inquire 
whether this corruption is necessary and hopeless, or 
may be cured ; whether the cure must come by the 
destruction of the substance in which it dwells, or 
whether that may be reformed : in either case, what 
the seat of the malady is, how the amputation may 
be effected or the new blood poured in, and the man 
himself survive. The world's history is full of the 
most serious and terrible answers to these questions — 
answers attesting how real and radical the difficulty 
was which suggested them. * The disease is in my 
body, this flesh, this accursed matter;' here was one 



40 SEAT OF THE DISEASE. 

often-repeated, never-exhausted reply; 'flesh must he 
destroyed; till it is, I can never he hetter.' All the 
macerations and tortures of Indian devotees had this 
justification. 'No, it is not there; it is in the soul 
that you are corrupted and fallen ; the hody is hut the 
tool and handmaid of its offences ; ' that was another, 
seemingly a more hopeful conclusion. And this must 
try to recover itself, this must seek again the high 
and glorious position which was once its own. By 
what ladder ? ' It must think high thoughts of itself ; 
it must not allow itself to he crushed and overpowered 
hy low hestial instincts, it must refuse to he degraded 
hy the mere animals in the form of men, among whom 
it dwells.' This was one prescription. ' Ah, no ! ' said 
the mystic, after hitter trial of that method ; ' it must 
not rise, hut sink; the soul must desire annihilation 
for itself; till it dies, it will never know what life is.' 
. All these conclusions, we might fancy, affected only 
a few individual men. Oh no! the whole society, 
the whole kingdom in which they are found is coloured 
and shaped hy them. I do not deny that there may 
come a time when they lose their power, when the 
large mass of notions and practices which they have 
created through a series of ages may hegin to upheave, 
when a general unbelief may take the place of an 
all-embracing credulity. But out of that unbelief you 
will see forms arising which will prove that the old 
notions are not dead; that they cannot die. They are 



POWERS OF DARKNESS. 41 

about you while you are despising them; they are 
within you while you are denying them; if you can find 
no clue to them, no explanation of them, they will 
still darken your hearts, and the face of the whole 
universe. 

3. This is equally true, I believe, of another, an 
older, we may think quite an obsolete, method of 
accounting for the existence of Evil. The belief in 
Evil Spirits, in Powers of Darkness to which the bodies 
and spirits of men are subject, which haunt particular 
places, which hold their assemblies at certain times, 
which claim certain men as their lieges, from whose 
assaults none are free : this belief we may often have 
been inclined to look upon as the most degrading and 
despicable of all, from which a sounder knowledge of 
physics and of the freaks and the capacities of the 
human imagination, has delivered us. Are we sure 
that the deliverance has been effected? Are we sure 
that fears of an invisible world — of a world not to 
come, but about us, are not rife now, and may not 
rush in with great force upon rich and luxurious people, 
as much as upon the poorest and least instructed ? Are 
we sure that they may not press the discoveries of 
physical science, and the possibilities of the vast un- 
discovered regions above and beneath to which it points 
us, into their service? Are we sure that all our 
discoveries, or supposed discoveries, respecting the spi- 
ritual world within us, may not be equally appealed 



42 DEMONOLOGY NOT OBSOLETE. 

to in confirmation of a new demoniac system? Are 
we sure that the very enlightenment, which says it 
has ascertained Christian stories to he legends, will not 
be enlisted on the same side, because if we will only 
believe these facts, it will be so easy to show how those 
falsities may have originated ? 

And why is this belief at least as potent as either of 
the others, often mixing with them and giving them a 
new character? Because there is in men a sense of 
bondage to some power which they feel they should 
resist and cannot. Because that feeling of the ' ought,' 
and the ' cannot,' is what forces, not upon scholars, but 
upon the poorest men, the question of the freedom of the 
will, and bids them seek some solution of it. Has not 
every one wondered that the deepest problem in metaphy- 
sics, the one which so many professional metaphysicians 
give over as that which cannot be resolved — that respect- 
ing which divines cry out in pulpits, ' Ask nothing, 
it is so hard ; there is some truth in each view of it,' — 
should exercise and torment peasants in ten thousand 
ways ; that they should have listened, as they did when 
Covenanters and Puritans were preaching, to the most 
elaborate as well as startling expositions of it ; that if 
they cannot have the knot untied for them, they find 
some intelligible superstition wherewith to cut it? 
Oh! let us give over our miserable notion that poor 
men only want teaching about things on the surface, or 
will ever be satisfied with it. They are groping about 



THEOLOGY IN RELATION TO IT. 43 

the roots of things, whether we know it or not. You 
must meet them in that groping, and show them some 
way out of it, if you want true and brave citizens, 
not a community of dupes and quacks. You may talk 
against devilry as you like ; you will not get rid of it 
unless you can tell human beings whence comes that 
sense of a tyranny over their own very selves, which 
they express in a thousand forms of speech, which 
excites them to the greatest, often the most profitless, 
indignation against the arrangements of this world, 
which tempts them to people it, and heaven with objects 
of terror and despair. 

Here then are three schemes of the universe, all de- 
veloped out of the observation of facts, or, if you like 
that form of speech better, out of the consciousness of 
men, all leading to serious results affecting our well- 
being in this as well as in other periods of history. 
Each has given birth to theories of divinity, as well as 
to a very complicated anthropology. They show no 
symptoms of reconciliation, yet they exist side by side, 
and gather new votaries from various quarters, as well 
as new confirmation from each of these votaries. Shall 
we ask what Christian Theology, not according to any 
new conception of it, but according to the statements 
which have embodied themselves in creeds, and are most 
open to the censures of modern refinement, says of 
them? 

1. First, then — there is no disguising it — the assertion 



44 DEMONS IN THE OLD WORLD. 

stands broad and patent in the four Gospels, construed 
according to any ordinary rules of language ; nay, far 
more patent in them than in any of the earlier books ; — 
the acknowledgment of an Evil Spirit is characteristic 
of Christianity. I repeat it, characteristic of that, as 
distinguished either from Heathenism or from the earlier 
Jewish faith, out of which it grew. In the former, the 
acknowledgment of spirits or angels, who might mean 
mischief to men, was a deep and mighty element; it 
gradually got the better of all other elements ; in the 
high civilization of the Roman empire, the desire to 
avert the actual or possible designs of such powers con- 
stituted the religion of the immense majority, and secretly 
infused itself into all the cravings for magical power and 
knowledge of the future, which were never more active 
in the upper classes than when they had adopted an 
habitual unbelief. The Jew was taught, throughout all 
his history, that there were' enemies within as well as 
without, who were contending against him. He realized 
the conviction in his prayers to the God of his fathers. 
He could not believe that Philistines or Moabites 
were those who tormented him in his chamber. He 
learnt that the secret impalpable enemies there were 
his country's tyrants, even more than the others. The 
Pharisee of later times, with no feelings for his country 
except as it reflected his vanity or ministered to his 
contempt of others — wrapt up in the desire to get what 
he could for himself in this world and the next — had 



THE EVIL SPIEIT IN THE GOSPELS. 45 

wrought out of the hints which the living men of former 
days supplied him, a very extensive Demonology. Beel- 
zebub, the prince of the devils, occupied a large place in 
his theory; he could always be resorted to for the expla- 
nation of any more than usually startling difficulty. 
And, as among the heathens, this being was uncon- 
sciously becoming the object of his worship. All his 
features were gradually transferred by the imagination 
of the self-seeker to the God of Abraham. 

When then I speak of the belief in the existence 
and presence of an Evil Spirit as characteristic of the 
Gospels, I mean this : that in them first the idea of a 
spirit directly and absolutely opposed to the Father of 
Lights, the God of absolute goodness and love, bursts 
full upon us. There first we are taught, that it is not 
merely something in peculiarly evil men which is con- 
tending against the good and the true ; no, nor some- 
thing in all men : that God has an antagonist, and that 
all men, bad or good, have the same. There first this 
antagonist presents himself to us, altogether as a spirit, 
with no visible shape or clothing whatsoever ; there first 
the belief that Evil may be a rival creator, or entitled to 
some worship, — resistance to which had been the great 
secret of every reformation, and of every reformer's life 
in the old time, — is utterly put to flight : — the vision of 
a simple destroyer, a subverter of order, who is seeking 
continually to make us disbelieve in the Creator, to for- 
sake the order that we are in, taking place of every 



46 RELATION TO NATURAL CORRUPTION 

other. With these discoveries this is uniformly con- 
nected; that this tempter speaks to me, to myself, to 
the will ; that over that he has established his tyranny ; 
that there his chains must be broken ; but that all things 
in nature, with the soul and the body, have partaken, 
and do partake, of the slavery to which the man himself 
has submitted. 

I simply state these propositions ; I am not going to 
defend them. If they cannot defend themselves, by the 
light which they throw on the anticipations and diffi- 
culties of the human spirit, by the hint of deliverance 
which they offer it, by the horrible dreams which they 
scatter, my arguments would be worth nothing. But I 
am bound to show how this part of the divine revelation 
affects those two other hypotheses of which I spoke first. 

2. That there is a pravity or depravity in men, a down- 
ward tendency in men, and that this pravity or depravity 
is felt through his whole nature — this the Gospel does 
not assert as a principle of Theology, but concedes as 
an undoubted and ascertained fact of experience, which 
no one who contemplates man or the universe can 
gainsay. What it does theologically with reference 
to that experience is this; — as it confesses an Evil 
Spirit whose assaults are directed against the will in 
man, it forbids us ever to look upon any disease of our 
nature as the cause of transgression. The horrible 
notion, which has haunted moralists, divines, and practi- 
cal men, that pravity is the law of our being, and not the 



AND TO CIRCUMSTANCES. 47 

perpetual tendency to struggle against the law of our 
being, it discards and anathematises. By setting forth 
the Spirit of selfishness as the enemy of man, it explains, 
in perfect coincidence with our experience, wherein this 
pravity consists; that it is the inclination of every man 
to set up himself — to become his own law and his own 
centre — and so to throw all society into discord and dis- 
order. It thus explains the conviction of the devotee 
and the mystic that the body must die, and that the 
soul must die. Self being the plague of man, in some 
most wonderful sense he must die, that he may be deli- 
vered from his pravity. And yet neither body nor soul 
can be in itself evil. Each is in bondage to some evil 
power. If there is a God of Order mightier than the 
Destroyer, body and soul must be capable of redemption 
and restoration. 

3. And thus this Theology comes in contact with that 
wide-spread and most plausible creed, which attributes 
all evil to circumstances. Every one of the facts from 
which this creed is deduced, it fully admits. Every 
husband, father, ruler, brings his own quota of selfish- 
ness to swell the general stock. It accumulates from 
age to age. The sins of the fathers are visited upon 
the children, to the third and fourth generation. The 
idolatrous habit, the sensual habit, goes on propagating 
itself, so that the cry, 

JEtas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
Progeniem vitiosiorera, 



48 GENEEAL INFEEENCE. 

is the ordinary complaint of intelligent observers. And 
because it is so, all prudential alleviations of the evil 
such as I admitted that we all did and must resort to, 
have the highest justification in principle. But that 
principle proclaims first, that the regeneration of society 
is not the substitution of a new set of circumstances 
for those in which men find themselves dwelling, 
but the full unfolding of that human and divine order 
to which they belong ; secondly, that it can only be 
effected when the will of man recognises and obeys 
the law against which the self-seeking tendency is the 
rebellion, and to that end is delivered from the yoke of 
the Spirit of Selfishness. 

Thus we are thrown back upon the old doctrine. 
If there is a God of perfect love, we may look for the 
conversion of the will in each man, for the regene- 
ration of the will in humanity ; we may ask with 
earnestness how both these ends may be effected, how 
far they have been effected already. Otherwise we must 
let things take their course. There is little hope for 
ourselves ; there is almost none for the world. 

I cannot be ignorant, that in this Essay I have 
encountered one of the most deeply rooted aver- 
sions in the minds of Unitarians. They have always 
regarded the doctrine of the existence and personality 
of the Devil as the least tenable figment of orthodox 
theology. They scarcely think that any one who pro- 
fesses to hold it in the present day can be sincere. 



DEPRAVITY MADE A LAW. 49 

They are very tolerant, can give a man credit for much 
invincible ignorance ; but they do not believe any man 
in the nineteenth century is quite fool enough for 
that. 

I perfectly understand this feeling. I know that it 
is very widely diffused. I shrink with instinctive cow- 
ardice from saying, ■ I maintain this dogma.' I should 
like exceedingly to hide it under some respectable peri- 
phrasis. J will tell you why I cannot. I believe that 
some of what seem to me the hardest, most mischievous 
theories of our modern popular divinity — those which 
shock the moral sense and reason of men most, those 
which most undermine the belief in God's infinite 
charity — arise from this timidity, of which I am con- 
scious myself, and which I see in my brethren. When 
men in the old time would have said bravely, mean- 
ing what they said, ' We are engaged in warfare with 
an Evil Spirit, he is trying to separate us from God, to 
make us hate our brethren,' we talk of the depravity of 
our nature, of the evil we have inherited from Adam 
Now that every child of Adam has this infection of 
nature I most entirely and inwardly believe. But as 
I have been just maintaining, whoever says that sin is 
a law, and not a transgression of the law of God, of the 
law of our being, is at issue with St. John and with the 
whole Old and New Testament. And it is the very closo 
approximation which* we make in some of our popular 
statements to this most flagrant and detestable heresy, 

E 



50 EQUIVOCATIONS, 

the still nearer approach which I fear we make to 
it in many of our more private transactions with our 
own hearts, which has called forth an indignant and 
a righteous protest from many classes of our country- 
men, the Unitarians being in some sort the spokes- 
men for the rest. And when we try to avoid this 
censure, it is by the very feeble and pusillanimous 
course of introducing modifications into the broad 
phrases with which we started, modifications that 
make them mean almost nothing. We maintain the 
' absolute, universal, all-pervading depravity ' of human 
nature ; but then there are ' beautiful relics of the 
divine image,' ' fallen columns,' &c. ; — pretty metaphors, 
no doubt — but who wants metaphors on a subject 
of such solemn and personal interest? Who can 
bear them when they reduce assertions, which we were 
told had the most profound signification, into mere 
nonentities ? 

What is pravity or depravity — affix to it the epithets 
universal, absolute, or any you please — but an inclina- 
tion to something which is not right, an inclination to 
turn away from that which is right, that which is the 
true and proper state of him who has the inclination ? 
What is it that experiences the inclination ; what is it 
that provokes the inclination ? I believe it is the spirit 
within me which feels the inclination : I believe it is a 
Spirit speaking to my spirit, who stirs up the inclina- 
tion. That old way of stating the case explains the 



JUSTICE AND MERCY OPPOSED. 51 

facts, and commends itself to my reason. I cannot find 
any other which does not conceal some facts, and does 
not outrage my reason. And of this I am sure, that 
when I have courage to use this language, as the 
expression of a truth which concerns me and every 
man, the whole battle of life becomes infinitely more 
serious to me, and yet more hopeful ; because I cannot 
believe in a Spirit which is tempting me into false- 
hood and evil, without believing that God is a Spirit, 
and that I am bound to Him, and that He is attracting 
me to truth and goodness. 

And thus another very unsightly, and to me quite 
portentous imagination of modern divines, is shown to be 
utterly inconsistent with the faith which we and our 
forefathers have professed. They talk of a war in the 
Divine mind between justice and mercy. They declare 
that a great scheme has been necessary to bring these 
qualities into reconciliation. When I call this a scheme 
of modern theology, I do not mean that there may not 
be very frequent traces of it in the argumentative dis- 
courses of old divines ; but I mean that, with the strong 
belief which they had, that an Evil Spirit was drawing 
them away both from mercy and righteousness — was 
tempting them to be both unjust and hard-hearted — they 
had a practical witness against any notion of this kind, 
which we have lost, or are losing. They could not but 
feel that to be in a healthful, moral state, they must 
be both just and merciful ; that there must be a perfect 



52 APPLICATION TO UNITARIANS. 

unity and harmony between these qualities ; that what- 
ever has put them in seeming division, came from the 
Evil Spirit ; and they could not really attribute to the 
archetypal mind that which destroyed the purity of 
the image. The God who was to deliver them from this 
strife, could not Himself be the subject of it. I believe, 
then, that the change which the Unitarians rightly attri- 
bute to us, — and which they consider the blessed effect 
of civilisation and progress upon minds naturally averse 
from either, — has introduced darkness into our views of 
God, feebleness into our struggles for good as men. 
As soon as we return to the practical faith of the old 
men, we shall fling their theories and our own to the 
winds when they interfere with the absolute righteousness 
and love of God ; we shall know that there must be an 
All-Good on the one side, or that we shall be at the 
mercy of the All-Evil on the other. 

And now, having applied this principle to our own 
condemnation, I have a right to turn round upon the 
Unitarian and ask him, whether the same causes are not 
at work upon him as upon us. I complained in my 
first Essay that the Unitarian of the last century sub- 
stituted a mere amiable, good-natured Being, for a God 
of perfect charity. I referred in the last to their super- 
ficial notions respecting Sin. I said that they could 
not tell us anything about the actual conflict of life ; 
that the deepest wants of which human beings are 
conscious were unknown to them ; that they could 



SPIEITUAL CONFLICTS. 53 

only teach us to live a life of quietness and propriety, 
when there was little to ruffle the air or the sea. Is not 
that refinement which will not face the fact of an Evil 
Spirit — the scorn of such a belief as vulgar, — at the root 
of a weakness which is alienating not merely other men, 
but the youthful and earnest members of their own sect 
from them? 

For these younger men, I know, do confess the reality 
of spiritual conflicts. Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress 1 
they regard as a book of great significance. They have 
no doubt that Christian must, in some sense, fight with 
Apollyon. ' And who,' they ask, l can object to an alle- 
1 gory which clothes so much of real experience in a robe 
< of fantasy ? Of course,' they continue, ' you would not 
1 take the whole of that story for Gospel, would you ? 
' And if we are quite willing to take what is universal 
' in it apart from its old Hebrew drapery, what more do 
' you want ? We allow there are abysses and eternities, 
' with which men have to do — valleys of the shadow of 
? death, if you like that language. When you speak of 
1 the Devil, we suppose you mean that, or a conceit of 
' your own, or a dream of the past.' 

One word, dear friends, only one word, just that we 
may understand each other. If you do maintain the 
universal truth which lies in that story of Apollyon, I 
am thoroughly content : let all the outsides pass for 
what they are worth ; let them be acknowledge^, as the 
mere dress suitable to a story, not to fact; to the 



54 SUBSTANCE AND DEAPEEY. 

seventeenth century, not to the nineteenth. But mark, 
it is the outside which I give up ; to the inside I hold 
fast. I am very sorry to say, that these eternities and 
abysses of yours look to me very like outsides, mere 
drapery; the fashionable dialect of a certain not very 
earnest, rather fantastic period. The dress of the old 
people being stripped off, as we are agreed it shall 
be, there remains — what ? The history of some mental 
process, no doubt ; — but the nature of the process ? Is 
it a shadow-fight ? Is it a game of blacks and whites, 
the same hand moving both ? These are questions of 
some importance to the sincerity of our acts and thoughts. 
I tell you plainly you have not resolved them, as I 
have a right to demand, on my own behalf and on be- 
half of my kind, that they should be resolved. And 
though I would not for the world that you should anti- 
cipate by one hour the decision of your own conscience 
upon them ; though I honour you for not adopting 
phrases of ours, or of the Bible, which do not express 
something substantial to you ; yet I cannot conceal my 
conviction, the result of my own experience, that your 
minds will be in a simpler, healthier state, that you will 
win a real victory over some of the most plausible con- 
ventionalisms of this age, that you will grasp the truth 
you have more firmly, and be readier to receive any you 
have not yet apprehended, when you have courage to 
say, ' We do verily believe that we have a world, and 
a flesh, and a Devil to fight with.' 



TRANSITION TO THE NEXT ESSAY. 55 

And before you believe it, or know that you do, I 
shall claim you as men who are actually engaged in 
this struggle, and I shall go on to show, that in your 
heart, as much as in mine, there is a witness for 
righteousness and truth, which world, and flesh, and 
Devil have been unable to silence. 



ESSAY IV. 

ON THE SENSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN MEN, AND THEIR 
DISCOVERY OF A REDEEMER. ' 

Every thoughtful reader of the book of Job must 
have been struck by two characteristics of it, which 
seem, at first sight, altogether inconsistent. The suffer- 
ing man has the most intense personal sense of his own 
evil. He makes also the most vehement, repeated, 
passionate protestations of his own righteousness. It 
cannot be pretended that he defends his innocence as 
far as men are concerned, but that he confesses himself 
guilty in the sight of God. On the contrary, he appeals 
again and again from men to God. He calls for His 
judgment. He longs to go and plead before Him. 
There would have been no need of clearing himself 
before a human tribunal. His friends do not, as it has 
been customary to say, attack him. They try, in their 
way, to console him. They are as much astonished at 
the vehemence of his self-accusations as they are shocked 
at his self-righteousness. They are quite convinced 
that God is ready to forgive those who make their 
prayer to Him. That is what they would do, if they 



JOB AND HIS FRIENDS. 57 

had fallen into Job's calamities. The ancients, who 
were much wiser than him or them, have assured them 
that it is the right course. Why does not the stricken 
man take it ? Why does he indulge in such dreadful 
wailings, which must be offensive to the Judge who has 
afflicted him ? Above all, how dares he talk, as if a man 
might be just before God ? How could he, who com-, 
plained that he possessed all the sins of his youth, 
nevertheless declare, that there was a purity and a 
truth in him, which the Searcher of all hearts would at 
last acknowledge ? What did this contradiction mean ? 
How could he justify it against all their precedents and 
arguments ? 

He could not justify it at all. The contradiction was 
there. He felt it, he uttered it, he found in it the 
secret of his anguish. He could only tell his friends : 
1 Your precedents and your arguments do not clear it 
1 away in the least. I knew them all before. I could 
' have poured them out upon you if you had been in my 
1 case. But when one is brought face to face with 
' suffering, they prove to be mere wind. These words 

• of yours buzz about me, torment me, sometimes leave 
' their stings in me, but they have nothing to do with 

* me. They do not show me where I am wrong and 
' where I am right. I am before a Judge who does not 
' appear to recognise your maxims and modes of proce- 
' dure. Oh! that I might order my cause before Him !' 

Nor was it only the self-righteousness of Job which 



58 • HIS PEOTEST AGAINST SUFFERING. 

shocked Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar. Their theory 
of the nature of pain was also thoroughly outraged by 
his language. I do not see any proof that they thought 
it merely a judgment from God for his transgressions. 
They would have been quite willing to call it, as we do, 
a merciful visitation. What offends them is, that Job 
groans under it as if it were an evil, that he seems to 
speak of it as if it came from an enemy. How can this 
be ? Did not God send it ? Is not all this suffering 
permitted, even ordained by Him? What possible 
right can a poor creature, a worm of the earth, have to 
remonstrate and complain that anything is amiss ? 

Again, it is clear that the friends have the advantage. 
Job cannot at all explain how it is that pain should 
seem to him so very intolerable, and yet that it should 
be from God. It is the secret he wants to discover. 
But the demands for submission which his friends make 
upon him are not the least helps to the discovery. He 
cannot satisfy these demands ; he cannot do what they 
tell him to do. He must and will cry out. He is sure 
that all is not right, let them pretend to think so, as 
much as they will. This pain, however it may have 
come to him, is an evil. No one shall force him to belie 
his conscience by saying that it is a good. 

It does not appear from the story that in either of 
these points Job grows into more consent with their 
opinion, as his discipline becomes more severe and 
his experience greater. His confidence that he has a 



SIN AND KIGHTEOUSNESS. 59 

righteousness, a real substantial righteousness, which no 
one shall remove from him, which he will hold fast and 
not let go, waxes stronger as his pain becomes bitterer 
and more habitual. There are great alternations of 
feeling. The deepest acknowledgments of sin come 
forth from his heart. But he speaks as if his righteous- 
ness were deeper and more grounded than that. Sin 
cleaves very close to him ; it seems as if it were part of 
himself, almost as if it were himself. But his righteous- 
ness belongs to him still more entirely. However 
strange the paradox, it is more himself than even that. 
He must express that conviction, he does express it, 
though he knows better than any one can tell him how 
much it is at variance with what he had been thinking 
and saying the moment before. 

So also of the suffering. He has wonderful intuitions, 
ever and anon, of the mercy and goodness of God. He 
believes that He is trying him, and that He will bring 
him forth out of the fires. And yet, why does this 
happen to him ? What is it all for ? He will not cheat 
God and outrage His truth, by uttering soft phrases 
which set at nought the conviction of his heart. There 
is that about him from which he feels that he ought 
to be delivered, an anguish of body and soul, which 
he cannot reconcile with the goodness he yet clings to 
and trusts in. 

There comes a moment in the life of Job, when these 
two thoughts, the thought of a righteousness within 



60 MY REDEEMER LIVETH. 

him which is mightier than the evil, the thought of 
some deliverance from his suffering which should he 
also a justification of God, are brought together in his 
mind. He exclaims, 'I know that my Redeemer 
' liveth ; in my flesh I shall see God, I shall see Him 
- for myself, and my eyes shall behold Him and not 
1 another.' He expects that this Redeemer will stand 
at the latter day upon the earth. But he evidently 
does not rest upon an expectation. It is not what this 
Redeemer may be or may do hereafter he chiefly 
thinks of. He lives. He is with him now. There- 
fore he calls upon his friends to say whether they do 
not see that he has the root of the matter in him. 

At length, we are told, God answers Job out of the 
whirlwind. He shows him a depth of wisdom in the 
flight of every bird, and in the structure of every 
insect, which he cannot dive into. He shows him an 
order which he is sure is very good though he is lost 
in it. Then he says, ' I have heard of Thee by the 
* hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee, 
f Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and 
ashes.' A wonderful conclusion follows. God justifies 
the complaining man more than those who had pleaded 
so earnestly for His power and providence. They are 
forgiven when he prays for them. And the last days 
of Job are better than the beginning. 

The early passages in the book of Job respecting 
Satan seem to anticipate what I said was especially 



THE BOOK ACCEPTED AS TRUE. 61 

New Testament theology. They do so only, I believe, 
because the story is more simply human, less Jewish, 
than any in the Old Testament. Job is represented 
as lwing outside of the limits within which the 
posterity of Abraham was confined. No words are 
used to identify him with them, or to show that he 
possessed any of the privileges with which their 
covenant and history invested them. We have here, 
therefore, what is at least meant to be a history of 
human experience. Whether it is biographical or dra- 
matical, or, as I conceive, both, this must be the 
intention of it. Job is shown, and we are shown, by 
an experimentum cruets, what in him is merely acci- 
dental, what belongs to him as a man. Christendom 
has received the book in this sense. Doctors have 
taken pains to illustrate it, and have left it much as 
they found it. Plain, suffering men have understood it 
with all its difficulties much better than the most simple 
tracts written expressly for their use. You will see 
bedridden women, just able to make out the letters of 
it, feeding on it and finding themselves in it. You 
will hear men who regard our Theology as a miserable 
attempt to form a theory of the universe, expressing 
their delight in this one of our theological books, 
because it so nobly and triumphantly casts theories 
of the universe to the ground. How it squares with 
our hypotheses they cannot imagine, but it certainly 
answers to the testimony of their hearts. 



62 ALL HAVE A SENSE OF KIGHTEOUSNESS. 

And I believe most clergymen, most religious persons 
who have conversed at all seriously with men of any 
class, from the most refined to the most ignorant — in 
any state of mind, from that of the most contented 
Pharisee, to that of the lowest criminal — have another 
test of the authenticity of the book as a record of actual 
humanity. They hear from one and all, in some lan- 
guage or other, the assertion of a righteousness which 
they are sure is theirs, and which cannot be taken from 
them. They may call themselves miserable sinners ; 
some of them may feel that they are so ; some may 
tremble at the judgment which they think is coming upon 
them for their sins. But in all there is a secret reserve 
of belief, that there is in them that which is not sin, 
which is the very opposite of sin. When you tell them 
that the feeling is very wrong, that ' God be merciful to 
me' is the only true prayer, that God's law is very holy, 
that they have violated it, and so forth — they will listen, 
— they may assent. From prudence or deference to you 
they may suppress the offensive phrase, or change their 
tone. Those will not be the best and honestest who 
do so. The man who cries, ' Till I die you shall not 
take my integrity from me,' and who makes his teacher 
weep for the fearful deceitfulness of the human heart, 
may be nearest, if the Bible speaks right, to the root of 
the matter, — nearest to repentance and humiliation. But 
be that as it may, the fact in each case is nearly the 
same. Each man has got this sense of a righteousness, 



PAIN— THE DELIVERED. 63 

whether he realizes it distinctly or indistinctly, whether 
he expresses it courageously or keeps it to himself. 

Not less true is it that each man has that other con- 
viction which Job uttered so manfully, that pain is an 
evil and comes from an enemy, and is contrary to the 
nature and reason of things ; however from a stoical 
maxim, or a sense of duty, or a habit of patience, 
he may submit to it; however much, to please his 
teacher or get rid of him, he may assent to phrases 
which appear to affirm an opposite doctrine. The 
witness of the conscience — of the whole man, on this 
point, is too strong for any cool, disinterested reflections. 
It is no time for school distinctions about soul and body. 
Both are confounded in one mortal anguish. 

And when the man sends forth a bitter cry towards 
heaven, when he expresses his faith that he has a 
Deliverer somewhere, it is not a Redeemer for his soul 
that he asks more than for his body. It is the con- 
dition in which he finds himself from which he cries to 
be set free, and from which he feels that he has a kind 
of right to be set free. It does not seem to him accord- 
ing to nature and order that he should be as he is ; 
and you cannot make him see it. He will ask God, 
if he asks at all, to show that it is not according to His 
order and will. 

If we did believe that in all there was a divine process, 
such as the Book of Job describes to us, — if we might 
take that as an inspired history of God's ways to men, — 
we should not surely stop at this point of the application. 



64 THE ANSWER OUT OF THE WHIRLWIND. 

We should suppose God was really answering his 
creature and child out of the whirlwind ; and by won- 
derful arguments — drawn, it may be, from the least object 
in nature, from the commonest fact of the man's expe- 
rience, or from the whole Cosmos in which he finds him- 
self — addressed to an ear which our words do not reach, 
entering secret passages of the spirit into which we 
have no access — was leading him, — not by denying the 
instincts and anticipations of his heart, but by clearing 
them, and justifying them, — to lay himself in dust and 
ashes. When a man knows that he has a righteous 
Lord and Judge, who does not plead his omnipotence 
and his right to punish, but who debates the case with 
him, who shows him his truth and his error— the sense 
of Infinite Wisdom, sustaining and carrying out Infinite 
Love, abases him rapidly. He understands how he has 
been measuring himself, and his understanding, against 
that love, that wisdom. A feeling of infinite shame 
grows out of the feeling of undoubting trust. The 
child sinks in nothingness at its Father's feet, just when 
He is about to take it to His arms. 

But it is a Father, not a vague world before which 
it has bowed. Oh ! if we would preserve our brethren 
from a dark abyss of Pantheism, when their spirits 
are beginning to open to some of the harmonies of 
the universe, let us not pause till we understand 
how it should be the end of God's discipline to 
justify Job more than his three friends : how it can 
be possible for Him to sanction that conviction of an 



CHEIST BEFOEE THE GOSPELS. 65 

internal and present righteousness, belonging to the 
man himself, which we were so anxious to confute. I 
believe, for this purpose, we must lay the foundations of 
our faith deeper, not than they are laid in the Scriptures 
or our Creeds, but very much deeper than they are laid 
in modern expositions. We say we wish to bring the 
sinner, weary, heavy-laden, and hopeless, to Christ. 
What can be a more blessed, or more benevolent, or 
more divine desire ? But do we mean that we merely 
wish to bring the sinner to know what Christ did and 
spoke, in those thirty-three years between his birth and 
his resurrection ? I fear we shall never understand the 
infinite significance of those years, or be able to take the 
Gospel narratives of them simply as they stand, if we 
have no other thought than this, or if there is no other 
which we dare proclaim to our fellow men. Do we not 
really believe that Christ was, before He took human flesh 
and dwelt among us ? Do we not suppose He actually 
conversed with prophets and patriarchs, and made them 
aware of His presence ? Or is this a mere arid dogma 
with us, which we prove out of Pearson, and which has 
nothing to do with our inmost convictions, with our 
very life ? How has it become so ? Is it not because 
we do not accept the New Testament explanation of 
these appearances and manifestations ; because we do 
not believe that Christ is in every man — the source of all 
light that ever visits him, the root of all the righteous 
thoughts and acts that he is ever able to conceive or do ? 

F 



66 THE STRAUSSIAN DOCTRINE. 

I am afraid, not only that we are letting this truth go, 
Tout that we are actually disbelieving it, and that the 
consequence will assuredly be, not the kind of humani- 
tarian doctrine about Christ which prevailed in the last 
century, not a belief of Him as a man, and nothing 
more than a man, — various experiences have been 
making it difficult, almost impossible, for us to acquiesce 
in such a theory, — but as a shadow-personage, whom the 
imagination has clothed, as it does all its heroes, with a 
certain divinity, really belonging to and derived from 
itself. That notion, when it is presented to our divines, 
strikes them at first with amazement, as an hypothesis 
which cannot, by possibility, gain acceptance with 
reasonable men. Then they discover how much accep- 
tance it has gained ; how naturally men in our day fall 
into it ; how many of them seem to receive it as if it 
was that which they had been always holding, only they 
had not courage to tell themselves so, or skill to put 
their thoughts into words. 

The next step is to look about for some method of 
confuting the theory; to see whether we can prove that 
Strauss and his disciples have misquoted the New Tes- 
tament or abused ancient authorities. Perhaps, if we can- 
not establish these points sufficiently by our learning, our 
German friends, who have been more closely engaged in 
the battle, may help us. I dare say they can, and that we 
also may do something for ourselves in that line, if we try. 
But I am convinced, also, that the effort will be worth next 



HOW IT CANNOT BE REFUTED. 67 

to nothing, if it is made ever so skilfully, if our blows are 
ever so straight and well directed. That which is a 
tendency and habit of the heart, is not cured by detecting 
fallacies in the mode in which it is embodied and presented 
to the intellect. If you have no other way of showing 
Christ not to be a mythical being, or a man elevated into 
a God by the same process which has deified thousands 
before and since, except by convicting the propounder 
of the hypothesis of some philological and historical 
blunders, you may be quite sure that he will prevail, 
though those blunders were multiplied a thousand-fold. 

I would earnestly entreat our divines to think well 
whether they are not to blame for the prevalence of this 
theory ; and whether, if they would eradicate it, they 
must not in the first place deal much more honestly 
with the facts of human experience, and secondly, con- 
nect those facts with principles which they admit to a 
certain extent, when they are arguing with those who 
deny them, but which they seldom fairly present to 
themselves, and still more rarely bring home to the 
consciences, of their surTering fellow-men. The facts I 
have tried to present in the light in which Scripture 
exhibits them to us — Scripture abundantly confirmed by 
daily observation. We apply the principle to those 
facts, when we say boldly to the man who declares that 
he has a righteousness which no one shall remove from 
him — ' That is true. You have such a righteousness. 
It is deeper than all the iniquity which is in you. It 



68 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF EIGHT IN MAN. 

lies at the very ground of your existence. And this 
righteousness dwells not merely in a law which is 
condemning you, it dwells in a Person in whom you 
may trust. The righteous Lord of man is with you, not 
in some heaven to which you must ascend that you may 
bring Him down, in some hell to which you must dive 
that you may raise Him up, but nigh you, at your heart.' 
The principle is expressed again when we say, ' You 
maintain that the pain you are suffering is not good 
but ill, a sign of wrong and disorder. You say that 
it is a chain of bondage, from which you must seek 
and cry for deliverance. You say that you cannot stop 
to settle in what part of you it is, that it is throughout 
you, that it affects you altogether, that you want a 
complete deliverance from it. Even so. Hold fast that 
conviction. Let no man, divine or layman, rob you of 
it. Pain is a sign and witness of disorder, the conse- 
quence of disorder. It is mockery to say otherwise. 
You describe it rightly ; it is a bondage, the sign that 
a tyrant has in some way intruded himself into this 
earth of our's. But you are permitted to suffer the 
consequence of that intrusion, just that you may attain 
to the knowledge of another fact, — that there is a Re- 
deemer, that He lives, that He is the stronger. That 
righteous King of your heart whom you have felt to be 
so near you, so one with you, that you could hardly 
help identifying Him with yourself, even while you 
confessed that you were so evil, He is the Redeemer as 



EFFECTS OF PAIN AND THE CUKE OF IT. 69 

well as the Lord of you and of man. Believe that He 
is so. Ask to understand the way in which He has 
proved Himself so. You will find that God, not we. 
has been teaching you of Him, that He has "been 
talking with you in the whirlwind, while we were 
darkening counsel with words without knowledge ; lead- 
ing you to the sight of His glory, that He might make 
you willing to confess your own baseness. He has 
taught you that you have been in chains, but that you 
have been a willing wearer of the chains. To break 
them He must set you free. Self is your great prison- 
house. The strong man armed, who keeps that prison 
in safety, must be bound. The rod of the enchanter, 
who holds your will in bondage, must be broken by 
some diviner spell before the arms can be loosed, and 
the captive rise and move again. 

1 If you have carried away this lesson from your hours 
of suffering, and resolve to keep it, your latter days will 
be better than the beginning. The grey hairs of the 
stricken, worn out, desolate man, though no new children 
shouldcrowd his hearth in place of those that are departed, 
though no flocks and herds should be restored to him for 
those which the robbers have taken away, will be fresher, 
freer, more hopeful than the untaught innocence of his 
childhood. But you have had, in those hours, a glimpse 
into the deep mystery, how God may use. the conse- 
quences of the evil to which you have yielded, — and 
can make also the deliverance, if it be at present only 



70 SPLENDID SINS— UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 

a partial one, from those consequences, — instruments in 
jour emancipation from the evil itself; because, through 
His discipline, these have become the means of leading 
you to the apprehension of Himself, and of that Daysman, 
between us and Him, whom Job saw that he needed, 
and who must be as much yours as He was his.' 

The remarks I made in my last Essay show that I do 
not undervalue the testimony which the elder Unitarians 
bore against some of the phrases and opinions, respect- 
ing human nature and human corruption, into which our 
popular religious teachers have fallen. They maintained 
stoutly, that ordinary men do good acts, and that we have 
no business to call such acts splendid sins. ' Either,' 
they said, ' words mean nothing, and human language, 
when it is turned to religious purposes, is used to con- 
ceal not to express our thoughts, or else the epithets, 
gentle, brave, just, to whomsoever they are applied, 
must be taken as expressing sincere moral commendation, 
and must not be explained away because we have some 
mental reservation about the religion or irreligion of the 
person to whom we apply them.' All such protests 
seem to me honest appeals to the conscience, and to the 
truth of God — denunciations of a style of thinking and 
judging which leads to the most fatal moral confusions. 

But the Unitarians, I think, were very little able 
to sustain these useful assertions of theirs against an 
earnest and thoughtful man, who had known what evil 
was in himself, and who had adopted St. Paul's 



EAKNEST MEN NOT CONVINCED. 71 

language, not only "because it was St. Paul's, but because 
it expressed the deepest thoughts of his own heart, ' In 
me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.' Such 
expressions seemed to them merely extravagant and 
foolish ; indications of a temporary insanity in the person 
who resorted to them, which time or change of air would 
probably cure. Sometimes they saw that these remedies 
were effectual. The man's judgment of himself was 
connected with much that was morbid ; his judgments 
of others, and the theories which he deduced from his 
experience, he gradually discovered to be uncharitable 
and untenable ; his vivid impressions yielded to such 
discoveries and passed away. There were others whom 
neither time nor change of air, nor the observation of 
their own rashness, nor repentance for it, at all shook 
in this strong and solid conviction. They had found 
the Apostle's assertion to be true. They could abandon 
it for no Pelagian refinements. With them, these Uni- 
tarians felt themselves utterly at a loss. They could 
only talk to them about an external morality, of which 
the hearers made no account. The disputants were 
speaking of different subjects, but subjects between 
which there existed a close connexion; one of which, 
if rightly understood, would have been of the greatest 
help in explaining the other. The Unitarians discoursed 
concerning the doings of a man, those they called enthu- 
siasts concerning his being. But how poor are his 
doings if they do not draw life from his being ; how 



72 

much lie will deceive himself about his "being, if it does 
not make itself manifest in doings ! How soon will 
even commercial honesty perish, if you have not found 
out the secret of making the man honest ! But how 
easy is it for a man to frame for himself a certain 
internal standard, which shall be compatible with the 
greatest external fraud and wrong ! 

I am sure people are coming to some discoveries of 
this kind ; and that they are almost equally dissatisfied 
with that flimsy doctrine about behaviour, which was all 
that the religion of rewards and punishments could pro- 
duce, and with that assertion of truths as belonging to 
the believer and not to other men, which is its antagonist. 
Both system^ are falling by their own weight. The 
external moralist fails to produce the results he says are 
all-important ; the exclusive religionist shows himself 
more worldly than his neighbours. But while each is 
separately perishing, was there no truth in each which 
cannot perish ? What is it ? How shall we find it out ? 
I have been led in this Essay to seek for this recon- 
ciliation, by a method which will seem to the Unitarian 
to the last degree strange and monstrous. What infinite 
pains Priestley and his school took to disprove the pre- 
existence of our Lord ! How satisfactorily they showed 
that that pre-existence must imply something more than 
the Arians said it implied ; that there was no resting in 
their half-conclusion ! How indefatigably they strove 
to exhaust Scripture of all expressions which savoured 



FALSE POSITION OF ITS DEFENDEES. 73 

of this mystical imagination ! With what rapture they 
hailed a bad translation, or a doubtful reading ! How 
resolved they were that even the early Church and the 
early heretics should not mean what all previous stu- 
dents of their language thought they must mean ! They 
exhibited great diligence, undoubtedly, and diligence 
not without its reward. For their orthodox antagonists, 
in their eagerness to confute these statements, made a 
concession which, for their purposes, was quite invalu- 
able. They argued as if you might start from the 
Unitarian hypothesis of our Lord's nature, and then 
prove Him to be something more than that hypothesis 
affirmed Him to be. It was to be taken for granted 
that the New Testament spoke of Jesus of Nazareth first 
as a good man and a great prophet ; it was to be con- 
tended that it also spoke of Him as divine. 

To be involved in such a controversy is almost 
to be involved in the necessity of arguing, refining, 
special-pleading for a principle which, at the same 
time, we affirm to be the substance of the Gospel, to be 
connected with the very life of man. What an utterly 
false position for men to be thrown into ! How could 
the spectators help thinking that it was a fencing-match, 
the interest of which depended upon successful parries 
and thrusts ; unless, which was too often the case, one 
of the combatants were persuaded into the crime of 
Laertes, and then, changing their rapiers, they struck 
each other with the poisoned instrument. And where 



74 THE LAST AND PKESENTAGE. 

there was on the one side the advantage of academical 
fame, of ecclesiastical dignity, the shouts of the crowd, 
the patronage of the state, the sympathies of the 
lovers of fair play would of course be bestowed on the 
opposite. 

Nor was it only that the supporter of the orthodox 
side chose a bad standing-ground. It cannot be denied, 
that in the last age, that was felt to be the natural 
standing-ground. Some men were driven from it by 
spiritual convictions ; some found it inconsistent with a 
scholarlike study of the Bible ; but most spoke as if it 
were the reasonable position. You yielded it up in 
deference to an invincible array of texts or authorities, 
or to some power which directly bore upon your own 
spirit. Those who maintained it were supposed to be 
adopting the faith which every philosopher and every 
simple man would adopt, unless he were prepared for a 
very bold infidelity, or to surrender his common sense. 

In what I have said of Strauss, I have hinted how 
much the case is altered now in this respect. The habit 
of thought which made the arguments of the Humanita- 
rians seem so strong and decisive, which was always 
ready to supply any gaps in their reasoning, is subverted. 
Through whatever influence the change has come to pass, 
philosophers recognise it ; all feel it. There is no eager- 
ness now to show that the disciples of Jesus did not 
attach a mysterious and supernatural dignity to His 
character ; the labour is to prove that they did. Philology 



MOTIVES TO STEAUSSIANISM. 75 

is discovered to have been in favour of the older notion 
of their opinions ; only philosophy failed in accounting 
for them. The modern Unitarian has strong motives 
for looking favourably upon statements of this hind. 
They meet the discontent with which he has learnt to 
regard the dryness of his own creed. They justify his tra- 
ditional dislike of the orthodox creed. They gratify his 
desire for a religion which shall point less to external 
conduct, more to internal life. If he can look upon 
Jesus as connected in some way with the experiences of 
his own heart, with those spiritual conflicts of which he 
has learnt to see the significance, what an emancipation 
it will be from the formalism which he hates, in his 
own school and ours ! How much more easily than 
Priestley or Belsham, with how much less of outrage 
upon scholarship, he can get rid of mere texts and narra- 
tives ! with how much more of delight than they ever 
betrayed, can he recognise all that was divinest in the 
life of the man ; with how much more of freedom and 
less of exclusiveness can he connect this man with all 
the other great champions of the race ! 

Yes ; these are great temptations, irresistible tempta- 
tions to one who, as Bunyan says, ' has not a burthen on 
his back.' I may easily persuade myself that the Christ 
I was taught to believe in, is a creation of the human 
intellect or imagination. That hypothesis will come 
to me, clothed with a wonderful plausibility, when 
I stumble all at once, in my walks through this common 



76 WHO CANNOT YIELD TO THEM. 

world, upon mines of which I had not suspected the 
existence — mines in which the most busy processes are 
going on, and must have been going on for generations. 
But if by chance while I am exploring these rich mines 
in myself, I am brought to a stand-still by the discovery 
that i" am the worker of them ; that I have worked them 
ill; that I am the steward of some one who is the 
possessor of them ; that I am bankrupt, and guilty ; — 
then it becomes a necessity — not of my traditional faith, 
or of my fears — but of my inmost spirit, that I should 
find some One whom I did not create, some One who is 
not subject to my accidents and changes, some One in 
whom I may rest for life and death. Who is this ? 
What name have you for Him ? I say it is the Christ, 
whose name I was taught to pronounce in my childhood ; 
the Righteous one, the Redeemer in whom Job, and 
David, and the prophets trusted, the ground of all that 
is true, in you, and me, and every man ; the Source of 
the good acts — which are therefore not splendid sins — of 
you, and me, and every man ; the Light that lighteneth 
every man who cometh into the world. Apart from Him, 
I feel that there dwells in me no good thing ; but T am 
sure that I am not apart from Him, nor you, nor any man. 
I have a right to tell you this : if I have any work to do 
in the world it is to tell you this. And now I will tell 
you further why I hold that this righteous Being is the 
Son of God. 



ESSAY V. 



THE SON OF GOD. 



I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our 
Lord, has been for eighteen centuries the creed of 
Christendom. The teachers to whom I alluded in my 
last Essay, are especially active in pointing out the 
delusion into which we have fallen upon this subject. 

' All mythologies recognise Sons of God. Every 
' legendary person in the Greek world was the offspring 
' of some God ; the most conspicuous, of Zeus the chief 
' God. Where is your singularity ? Where are the 
1 signs of some essential characteristic divinity in your 
' faith? It bears about it the ordinary tokens of 
1 humanity. To these it owes its general acceptance. 
1 In this instance, as in all others, it has adopted into 
1 itself those human feelings and notions which had 
' taken various forms in different ages and races ; it has 
' adopted them free from some adjuncts and accidents 
' which were worn out and ready to perish. It has 
' added to them accidents of its own, which will 
{ drop off in due time by a necessary law. It has 
' especially connected a high ideal of humanity with 



78 SONS OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY. 

' a particular person. That ideal will be found to 
1 belong to the whole race, not to him. He will retain 
' a high place among the asserters of human rights and 
1 duties, not that which the idolatry of his disciples has 
1 assigned him.' 

I have admitted already that the ordinary methods 
of controversy are entirely out of place when statements 
of this kind are propounded. The question, whichever 
way it is decided, must concern the life and being of 
every one of us. It must affect the condition of man- 
kind now, and the whole future history of the world. 
To argue and debate it as if it turned upon points 
of verbal criticism, as if the determination could be 
influenced by the greater or less skill in reasoning on 
either side, as if it could be settled by votes, must have 
the effect of darkening our consciences, of making us 
doubt inwardly whether the truth signifies anything to 
us, or whether we can arrive at it. To keep silence on 
these doubts, if this is the only mode of treating them, 
is not only a sign of religious reverence, but of common 
sense. But since there is, I believe, another way of 
dealing with them, — one which will be acknowledged as 
fairer by those who experience them, and yet one which 
does not require the heart and conscience to be asleep, 
but which asks all their help in determining whether 
we have received a fable, or are holding, all too weakly, 
an eternal verity, — I consider it much safer not to leave 
such a topic to the chances of ordinary conversation and 



STATEMENT OF THE FACT. 79 

popular literature, but to introduce it into solemn dis- 
courses as if we were aware of the number of human 
souls which it is tormenting. 

Our first plain duty is to admit the fact as it is 
stated, not entering into particulars for the sake of 
showing whether there are any exceptions to it or 
limitations of it. For our purpose it is not necessary to 
inquire why the Oriental spoke more of emanations from 
the God, and the Greeks, as well as our own Gothic 
ancestors, more of sons of God. The question is very 
interesting and even important. I may allude to it 
again at some other time, but it is enough here to admit 
the general proposition, that sons of God will be found 
occupying a conspicuous place in the mythology of 
every people which has left any strong impression of 
itself upon the history of the world. This being 
granted, the next point is to ascertain what are those 
general human feelings which this faith embodies. 
We cannot hesitate for a moment to allow that there 
are some ; that it is very desirable to know what they 
are ; and that they must be nearly related to Chris- 
tianity. 

First, then, it seems to be an instinct of men, so far 
as we may judge by these indications, that their helpers 
must come to them from some mysterious region ; that 
they cannot be merely children of the earth, merely of 
their own race. If they belong to us — so the conscience 
of man interpreted by history seems to bear witness — 



80 WHAT IS INVOLVED IN IT. 

they cannot understand our evils, or bring any power 
that is adequate to overcome them. Secondly, there 
seems to have been a strong persuasion among men 
that human relationships have something answering to 
them in that higher world from which they suppose 
their heroes to have descended. Thirdly, they seem 
to have been sure, that unless the superior beings were 
in some way related to them, their mere protection 
would be worth very little ; they would not confer the 
kind of benefits which the inferior asks from them. 
These are the obvious common-place inferences from 
these stories, which suggest themselves to every one ; 
they lie upon the surface of them. 

And if so, it can hardly, I think, be taken for granted 
that we are showing our respect for the instincts and 
conscience of humanity, when we assume that all the 
beings who have done it good, have not come from any 
mysterious source, but have belonged to the common 
stock of human beings ; that they have not been given to 
us, but, as to all their more transcendent qualities, created 
by us ; that their relation to us was the ordinary one of 
flesh and blood ; that we have glorified and deified them. 
These conclusions may be true, but they cannot follow 
from those facts to which our attention has been so 
eagerly directed ; those facts would seem at first sight 
to contradict them. I am quite willing, however, to 
acknowledge that there is evidence, and very strong 
evidence, in favour of these opinions — evidence which 



THE GODS HOW CREATED BY MEN. 81 

has made it most natural that serious thinkers should 
adopt them in this day and in other days. Notwith- 
standing that strong conviction in the minds of men, 
that their gods and heroes must be of a nature higher 
than their own, and that any sympathy with them must 
imply a condescension and stooping, it is quite manifest 
that they have imputed to the beings whom they reve- 
renced all the habits and peculiarities of the countries 
and races to which they belonged, all that was morbid 
in their own temperaments, much of the corruption and 
debasement to which they knew themselves to be 
prone. About this point there is no dispute. It is no 
new discovery, but one which Greek sages made much 
more than two thousand years ago, about their own 
countrymen. It was the secret of the unbelief of so 
many of them. It was that which led a few into the 
strongest and most settled assurance, that there was 
that which man did not create, and to which he must 
be conformed. And there is no doubt that, from age 
to age, the tendency went on increasing, till the Gods 
became different from the mass of men only by being 
the models and ideals of a superhuman malice and 
cruelty. 

But there is a chapter of human experience which 
we have not yet looked into. It is that of which I spoke 
m my last Essay. We found a man brought into a con- 
dition of physical and moral pain and weakness which 
deprived him of all advantages he might once have 

a 



82 EEFEKENCE TO THE LAST ESSAY. 

possessed, and confessing himself on a level with the most 
wretched of human creatures. There came to this man, 
so smitten, a consciousness of evil, which was perfectly 
new to him. This consciousness was strangely mixed 
with the assurance that there was a righteousness which 
he could actually claim as his. It was more deep than 
his evil. At times he felt that it was even more his 
own, though that seemed hone of his bone and flesh of 
his flesh. This conflict in his mind was connected with 
another. He could not deny that his suffering had come 
from God ; but yet he felt it to be a plague, an evil, an 
enemy. It spoke to him of bondage and oppression. 
Could God be the oppressor ? This man, we found, was 
gradually taught that God was not his oppressor, but 
the defender of his cause, — the asserter of his righteous- 
ness. How was this ? Was he then righteous ? Was 
he not the sinner he had believed himself to be ? Yes ; 
it was then first that he felt himself to be wholly a 
sinner, — that he became ashamed of all the pleas he 
had put forth on his own behalf. But there was, in 
some mysterious manner, a Redeemer, — an actual 
person connected with him, — one who he was - sure 
lived, — one who was at the root of his being, — one in 
whom he was righteous. 

Suppose this to be not Job's experience, but human ex- 
perience ; suppose he was led by a Divine guide through 
strange paths, to the knowledge of a fact which was 
true for him, because it was true for all men; suppose 



PRINCIPLE OF IT FURTHER DEVELOPED. 83 

the narrative has been recorded just by way of announc- 
ing this fact ; — then it would follow that this was not 
a Eedeemer, but the Redeemer ; not one of those who 
came down from time to time, out of some unknown 
world of light, to scatter some portion of the world's 
darkness, but the actual source of light ; not one of those 
who here and there puts down one of the earth's op- 
pressors, but the asserter of man's right against the 
oppressor of man. This cannot be one of those whom 
men have called into existence, and invested with the 
qualities which belong to them, as members of some par- 
ticular race or locality. The sufferer has been compelled 
to feel himself simply a man. All accidents are nothing 
to him now. If he has not hold of a substance, he must 
perish in his despair. 

Such are the results at which we have arrived already. 
But if that part of the story is true — and no part of it 
can be true if that is not — which represents God as 
Himself discovering to the innermost heart and spirit 
of the man his righteousness as well as his sin, — the 
Eedeemer as well as the oppressor — the question must 
have forced itself upon Job, and forces itself upon us : 
Is this Eedeemer, so closely connected with the human 
sufferer, not connected also with that divine Instructor 
who answered him out of the whirlwind ? Was this 
righteousness which Job perceived, not the righteous- 
ness of God Himself? Was He as widely separated 
from His creature as ever ? Was there no meaning in 



84 THE SON OF GOD 

the assertion that one was the image of the other ? 
What did all this history of a struggle signify, if that 
assertion was false ? Why had Job cared to know the 
mind and purpose of his Maker ? Why had he that 
sense of separation from Him — that longing to plead 
with Him? Whence came that cry for a Daysman 
between them ? 

If the Lord and Eedeemer whom Job, and thousands 
besides Job, in that day and in all days, in that country 
and in all countries, felt after and found, explains to us 
those many lords and redeemers, whom men in different 
places and ages have dreamed of or hoped for, may not 
He also explain those many sons of God of whom I 
have been speaking here ? May not this be the great 
radical experience which interprets those superficial ex- 
periences ; the great universal experience which inter- 
prets those partial ones? Job could not think of this 
Daysman, near as He was to his very being, except as 
one who had come to him, — who had stooped to him, — 
who belonged to a world of mystery. Job could not 
think of Him, except as related to the Invisible Lord of 
all. Job's most intimate conviction was that He was 
related to himself. These are the conditions that meet 
in all those dreams of demigods and heroic men which 
mythology presents us with. But here are not the causes 
which make those dreams local, temporary, artificial. 
It is from the One Being, the Lord of the spirit of all 
flesh, that this Son of God must have come. He must 



NOT YET INCAKNATE. 85 

be spiritual like that Being ; for it is the spirit, and not 
the sense of the sufferer which confesses Him. And 
whatever righteousness and goodness are perceived by 
the erring, trusting, broken-hearted penitent to be in 
the one, speaking to his sorrows and wants, must be 
the image and reflex of an absolute righteousness and 
grace in the other, which he could only adore. 

Many readers fancy that when we speak of a Person 
who is at once divine, and the ground of humanity, 
we must be assuming an Incarnation. I have not yet 
touched that doctrine ; what I am saying here has no 
reference to it. Christian theology does not speak of 
an incarnation, till it has spoken of ' an only-begotten 
Son, begotten of his Father before all worlds, of one 
substance with Him.' These words, though we unite 
so often in pronouncing them, and though in former 
times they were the strength and nourishment of con- 
fessors and martyrs, have come, in modern days, to be 
regarded as mere portions of a school divinity, which 
learned men must maintain by subtle arguments and an 
army of texts ; which ordinary men are to receive im- 
plicitly, because it is dangerous to doubt them; but which 
have no hold upon our common daily life, which can be 
tested by no experience, which those who are busy with 
religious feelings and states of mind will pass by with 
indifference, as not concerning vital godliness. We owe 
it to those objectors of whom I have spoken (and this 
surely ought to convince us how faithless and heartless 



86 MYSTERIES PRACTICAL. 

our dread of any objections is, and how much we are 
righting against God, when we try to suppress them) — 
we owe it to them that this delusion has been scattered, 
or must soon be scattered; and that these truths are 
compelled to come forth from amidst the cobwebs in 
which we have left them, to prove that they can bear 
the open day, and that they bring a more glorious 
sunlight with them which may penetrate into all the 
obscurest caverns of human thoughts and fears. If 
we take the Apostle St. John as our guide, we shall 
find that those mysteries, from which we have shrunk 
back, as if they must rob us of all simple and child- 
like faith, are the preservers of simplicity in thought, 
in word, in act, from the innumerable temptations to 
artifice and falsehood which beset all religious men, not 
less, but more than others ; that they can set us free 
from a host of vulgar earthborn notions and super- 
stitions, which we have adopted from the cloister or the 
crowd into our Christian dialect and practice ; that they 
can show how the one fundamental truth of God's love 
and charity makes all other facts — those belonging to 
the most inward discipline of the heart, those concerning 
the most outward economy of the world — sacred and 
luminous. 

I can only see at a great distance, that this must be 
so and is so, and can hope and pray that God may raise 
up some in these latter days of the world to teach us 
indeed to feel that it is so. The utmost I shall attempt 



PASSAGE IN ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. 87 

now is, to say a few words on one passage of St. John's 
Gospel, in which our Lord points out, as it seems to me, 
in a wonderful manner, the relation in which a belief in 
the Son of God stands to that consciousness of bondage 
which is inseparable from the consciousness of sin. 

If I traced in this passage any allusion to a belief in 
His Incarnation, or to that Passion which had not yet 
taken place, I should not quote it. But the only way 
in which the words bear upon the first of these subjects 
is this : they were addressed to certain Jews who had 
believed on Christ as a teacher, as a man standing visibly 
before them. He desired to lead them into a higher 
and better faith, the one which true men had held before 
He was born into the world, the only one which could 
sustain any after He had left it. He had said to those 
Jews who believed on Him, ' If ye continue in my 
word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' 
They answered, ' We are Abraham's children; we were 
never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou then, 
Ye shall be made free ? ' A strange question for men 
who were looking so earnestly for a deliverer from the 
Roman yoke, and yet one which had a good meaning in 
it. They were certain that in some way or other the 
privilege of being Abraham's children was the gift of a 
higher freedom, a nobler citizenship, which the Caesars 
could not take from them. Perhaps it was this. Per- 
haps our Lord came to show them how it was this. 



88 THE SON OVER HIS OWN HOUSE. 

But in the mean time, there was a plain staring fact 
which they must admit. Whether they were Abraham's 
children or not, they had committed sin ; they felt and 
knew that they had. And that sin did make them 
bondsmen. They were under a yoke, a heavy one to 
each of them, however he might slight his subjection to 
the emperor, however little that might practically or 
individually gall him. His will had a master ; he con- 
fessed it in a thousand ways ; he pleaded continually 
its subjection as an excuse for doing wrong acts, for not 
doing right ones. It was better simply to own the fact 
than to dissemble it. To own it was the beginning of 
emancipation. ' For the servant abideth not in the 
house for ever, but the Son abideth ever.' Over that 
house of theirs, not made with hands, there was a Son 
actually ruling, a Son of God. To Him the house 
belonged, not to the poor slave who fancied it was his. 
Let him once confess the true Lord of it, let him once 
give up his own imaginary claim of dominion, which 
was submission to a real servitude, and his chains would 
drop off. ' For if the Son shall make you free, then 
are ye free indeed.' All other attempts to shake off the 
yoke from your wills, make it harder and heavier. In the 
confession that a Son, an actual Son of God is your Lord, 
lies the secret of freedom. This is the true Hercules 
who takes Prometheus from his rock, and slays the vul- 
ture that is preying upon him. This is the deliverer of 
each man, because He is the deliverer of mankind. 



PEAYER TO THE SON OF GOD. 89 

I believe there never lias been, is not, nor will be any 
other way of asserting freedom or of preserving it than 
this. And I do believe that God is leading us by 
strange and hidden paths, to seek for this freedom and 
to find it. Many a heart, I trust, which shrinks back 
from our teaching, and perhaps thinks that we are bind- 
ing grievous chains on men's necks, is yet praying this 
prayer ; 

" Strong Son of God, Immortal Love, 
Whom we that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, — 
Believing where we cannot prove ; 
****** 

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust. 

Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 

He thinks he was not made to die, 

And Thou hast made him — Thou art just. 
" Thou seemest human and divine — 

The highest, holiest manhood thou, 

Our wills are ours, we know not how, 

Our wills are ours to make them thine. 
" Our little systems have their day, 

They have their day and cease to be ; 

They are but broken lights of thee, 

And Thou, Lord, art more than they." * 

Yes ! it is deeply and eternally true that ' Thou, O 
Lord, art more than they.' And therefore it becomes us 
most earnestly, for the sake of our fellow-men and of all 
the thoughts and doubts which are stirring in them so 
mightily at this time, not to let the faith in an actual 
Son of God be absorbed into any religious or philoso- 
phical theories or abstractions. When we lose that, we 

1 " In Memoriam," opening verses. 



90 KEVELATION NOT SYSTEM. 

lose all hope of freedom : our own conceits become our 
masters, and we are at trie mercy of any ingenious and 
skilful combiner who can put those conceits into a system ; 
we become liable for a time to all the caprices and 
fantasies of the age in which we live ; we shall probably 
sink at last into the implicit credence which we suppose 
to be the characteristic of ages that are past. Let us 
look, therefore, courageously at the current dogma, that 
there are certain great ideas floating in the vast ocean 
of traditions which the old world exhibits to us — that 
the Gospel appropriated some of these — and that we 
are to detect them and eliminate them from its own 
traditions. We have found these great ideas floating 
in that vast sea ; the idea of an Absolute God, the idea 
of a Son of God, who has close and intimate relations 
with men as their Lord and their Deliverer. We have 
found that these ideas demand to be substantiated — that 
all mischief, confusion, materialism, surrounded them 
when they became the creatures of men's fancy, liable 
to be altered, disturbed, divided, at their pleasure. What 
we ask for, is — not a System that shall put these ideas 
into their proper places, and so make them the subjects 
of our partial intellects, — but a Revelation which shall 
show us what they are, why we have had these hints 
aad intimations of them, what the eternal substances 
are which correspond to them. We want such a Revela- 
tion for philosophers and common men, for the prince 
and serf: we ask if there is such a one or no: we 



UNITAEIAN BELIEF IN A SON OF GOD. 91 

beseech the Father of Lights, if He is the God of infinite 
Charity we proclaim him to be, to tell us whether all our 
thoughts of Freedom and Truth have proceeded from the 
Father of Lies ; whether for eighteen centuries we have 
been propagating a mockery when we have said that 
there is a Son of God, who is Truth, and who can make 
us free indeed. 

'And is this all you have to say,' asks a grave 
Unitarian of the older school, ' to convince me that 
I must believe those mysteries, so outrageous to my 
reason, which you confess that even persons proud of 
their orthodoxy are rather eager to dismiss from their 
thoughts? That is really, as the lawyers say, your 
case?' I will tell you, friend, why I have said thus 
much, and why, on this topic, I mean to say no more. 
It is because I know that I have you on my side; 
because you are the principal evidence for what I have 
been maintaining. You never have made up your 
minds to abandon the name, ' Son of God.' You find 
it in the Gospels. Your desire to assert the letter of 
them against what you suppose our figurative and 
mystical interpretations forces you to admit the phrase. 
You not only do so, but you make the most of it. 
You quote all the passages in which Christ declares 
that the Son can do nothing of Himself, that the Father 
is greater than He, as decisive against the doctrine 
of our creeds. You do a vast service by insisting upon 
them, by compelling us to take notice of them. They 



92 PEOTEST AGAINST IDOLATEY. 

are not merely chance sentences carelessly thrown out, 
inconsistent with others which occur in the same books. 
You are right in affirming that they contain the key to 
the life of Christ on earth. You have suggested 
the thought to us, — you could not, consistently with 
your scheme, bring it forward, but it was latent in 
your argument — that what He was on earth must be 
the explanation of what He is. Never can I thank you 
enough for these hints — for the help they have 
been to me in apprehending the sense and connexion of 
those words which you cast aside. If the idea of 
subordination in the Son to the Father, which you so 
strongly urge, is once lost sight of, or considered an 
idle and unimportant school tenet, the morality of the 
Gospel and its divinity disappear together. You have 
helped to keep alive in our minds the distinction of the 
Persons, and that I believe is absolutely necessary that 
we may confess the unity of substance. 

But, moreover, you have borne a very strong and 
earnest protest against Idolatry. You have said that 
the Christian Church is just as liable to idolatry as 
the Heathen world was, and that its idolatry may be, 
probably will be, of the same kind, one adopted from 
the other. Truths most needful to be uttered, which 
Christian men refuse to heed at their peril! We 
Protestants require them as much as Roman Catholics ; 
we Englishmen, as much as Spaniards or Italians. 
May I venture to add, ' You need them also ' ? In so 



UNITARIANS IN DANGER OF IT. 93 

far as you feel — and I am sure many of you do feel — 
a sincere, fervent admiration and love for the character 
of Jesus Christ, in so far as you believe him to be the 
wisest, holiest, most benignant Teacher the world ever 
had, are you not in danger of setting a man above 
God? For I think the dim and distant vision of a 
Being nowise related to you, as far as your theory is 
concerned, — though by a happy and noble inconsistency 
you delight to call Him Father, — cannot, by any possi- 
bility, be so satisfactory as the thought of one who has 
actually done good and wrestled with evil here, and, 
in some sense, for you. When you can fairly say, 
we are contemplating either, that is the fairer object, is 
it not ? — the one upon which you would rather dwell, 
even, if it must be so, to the exclusion of the other ? 
Well ! but surely here is the commencement and germ 
of all idolatry. For you do not mean by idolatry, plain 
and practical people as you are, the mere outward service 
of the temple, the bowing the knee to a certain name ; 
you mean the deliberate preference of the judgment 
and the affections. And that, it seems to me, you will 
and must bestow upon Christ rather than upon God, if 
you do not accept the doctrine, that He is God of God, 
Light of Light. 

And do not think that it is possible for you, or for 
any man, to stop short at this point of idolatry. I 
think I could show from the history of the Christian 
no less than of the ancient world, that where a Son of 



94 ESCAPE FROM IT. 

man, simply in that character, has attracted to himself 
the reverence, affection, gratitude, homage which are not 
paid to God, those sons of men and daughters of men, 
who are felt to be less removed from the sins and im- 
purities of ordinary creatures than He is, practically over- 
shadow him. I intreat you, as resolute assertors of the 
worship due to the One God, seriously to consider this 
evidence, as history presents it to us, and then seriously 
to compare it with the evidence which your own hearts 
offer to you. By utter coldness, by becoming merely men 
of the world, by forgetting Christ habitually, and using 
the name of God merely as the symbol of a formal 
worship, you or we, or any men, may contrive to escape 
any fervent idolatry either of natural or human objects, 
because we are given up to the sleepy, habitual, uncon- 
scious, all-pervading idolatry of Mammon in his grossest 
form. But let any earnest sympathy or affection be 
awakened in us, and does not the clear, definite creature 
supplant the dim vision of the Creator, unless, in some 
way or other, it suggests Him? If it suggests Him, 
how and why ? What link is there between the human 
love and the divine ? What and where is the Days- 
man ? Who can it be — must there not be some one ? — 
in whom the human love entirely represents and images 
the divine? 

I do not wish to press this argument further, lest it 
should become too satisfactory to your reason, before it 
has satisfied your conscience. There is an ascent by 



THE CHRIST IN SORROW. 95 

another and more rugged road, which is, I believe, 
generally safer. In the sad hours of your life, the 
recollection of that Man you read of in your child- 
hood, the Man of Sorrows, the great sympathiser 
with human woes and sufferings, rises up before you, 
I know ; it has a reality for you, then ; you feel it to 
be not only beautiful, but true. In such moments, does 
it seem to you as if Christ were merely a person who, 
eighteen hundred years ago, made certain journey ings 
between Judea and Galilee? Can such a recollection 
fill up the blank which some present grief, the loss of 
some actual friend, has made in your hearts ? It does 
not, it never did this for you, or for any one ! Yet I do 
not doubt for a single instant, that a comfort has come 
to you from that contemplation. So far from denying 
your right to it, I would wish you and all earnestly to 
believe how strong and assured our right to it is. In 
Him, and for Him, we were created; this is our doctrine, 
or rather the doctrine of St. Paul; for we have said 
little enough about it. If so, is it wonderful that He 
should speak to you, and tell you of Himself? And oh ! 
if that voice says, You may trust me, you may lean upon 
me, for I know all things in heaven and earth — ' I and 
my Father are one ; ' is the whisper too good to be 
true, too much in accordance with the timid anticipations 
and longings of our spirits not to be rejected ? 

In some of the younger Unitarians, I hope, these 
words (or if not these, yet the thoughts which they 



96 THE NEW OPINIONS. 

try to express, in some other words or without any) may 
find a response. I do not mean in those who have learnt 
to talk of the great defenders of humanity and human 
rights, the Moseses, the Zoroasters, the Jesus Christs, the 
Mahomets, the Bobespierres. Men who put forth lan- 
guage of this kind to grieve their mothers and sisters, 
and insult those whom they pretend to call their brethren, 
are not in earnest. They use words to which they 
attach no meaning. They may be Unitarians or Emer- 
sonians to-day. After a little time they may put on coats 
without collars and become stiff Anglicans. Then they 
may take a turn with Cardinal Wiseman. One can only 
hope for them that in their final transmigration, after 
they have had a glimpse into the bottomless pit of 
Atheism, they may become little children again, eager 
to learn something, if it be but their alphabet. I do 
not speak of these. But there are many who are 
confounded with them — who, in a kind of recklessness, 
adopt phrases nearly akin to theirs — or who take that 
course from disgust with our hard speeches and narrow- 
ness of heart — between whom and the vain coxcombs 
with whom they are associated there is the breadth 
of a whole heaven. What I fear for them is a great 
and vehement reaction against the opinions which they 
have learnt, not in orthodox but in liberal and Unitarian 
nurseries. Instead of recognising an impassable chasm 
between the human and the divine, these become in their 
minds utterly confounded. The distinction between them, 



HOW THEY TEND TO IDOLATEY. 97 

they describe as impalpable, impossible to discover ; trie 
plague of orthodox divinity they say is, that it has 
made the attempt, that it has used hard and stiff words 
to define the boundary. ' Of course, Christ is divine. 
Why should he not be ? How can so beautiful a con- 
ception as that which his character exhibits, be other- 
wise than divine?' But the vehement struggle against 
their earlier faith which this mode of speaking indicates, 
shows also how strong the impression of that early faith 
has been. They are working up from the earthly 
ground ; they can recognise no basis except that ; they 
conceive Divinity only as an apotheosis of humanity. 

Now here is and must be the beginning of a very 
extensive and very frightful idolatry. The Straussians 
are perfectly right. There always have been sons of 
God — there always must be. We cannot contemplate 
the world without them. They always must stand in 
the most close relation to us ; they must leave their 
footprints on every different soil. Buddhists, old Greeks, 
modern Bomanists, we of this utilitarian time and 
country, have all traced them and confessed them. The 
temptation of one and all has been, by measuring and 
comparing these footprints to form an abstraction which 
is called a God, and may be anything, everything, 
nothing. The witness in all these hearts has been — 
It cannot be so that we arrive at Divinity. These must 
be the sons of a God. An abstraction, a generalization, 
cannot be their Father. 

H 



98 TRANSITION TO THE NEXT ESSAY. 

1 The witness of all these hearts ! Why that is 
your old orthodox dogma, against which we have "been 
all our lives protesting ! ' I cannot help that. You can 
help embracing that dogma. You can continue your 
protest. But will you not think a little of the other 
alternative ? Will you not ask yourselves seriously if 
you can escape the worship of ten thousand imaginary 
Buddhas and demigods ? Have you courage to go with 
me into the yet further question, whether you can avoid 
the acknowledgment of fleshly beings made into gods, 
with all their infirmities and crimes, if we are not pre- 
pared to confess that there is an only-begotten Son of 
God, who has been made flesh ? 



ESSAY VI. 



THE INCARNATION. 



The sons of the gods in Greek mythology can 
scarcely be separated from human forms, from actual 
flesh and blood. Those mysterious emanations from 
the divinity which the Oriental spoke of, and which 
became closely connected with the later Greek philo- 
sophy, shrunk from this contact. But the hearts of 
the people, as much in the east as in the west, demanded 
Incarnations ; no efforts of the more spiritual and ab- 
stracted priests could resist the demand. If you 
consider the passages in the Old Testament which 
speak of Angels or Sons of God, you will be struck 
with a resemblance to both these conceptions, and 
a difference from both. They are persons, not abstrac- 
tions ; they converse with human beings as if they 
were of the same kind ; no clear or deep line is drawn 
between them. On the other hand, they are never 
spoken of as assuming flesh, as putting on any vesture 
of mortality. You know not how, but they leave on 
you an impression of spirituality all the more strong, 



100 THE WORD OF GOD. 

"because no pains are taken to produce it. Yet it is not 
an impression made at our cost ; we feel ourselves to "be 
raised by what is told us of them ; if they are spiritual, 
we must be so likewise. For this reason, the Jew had 
no difficulty in acknowledging one higher Angel, one 
Son of God, above all the rest ; who yet was in more 
direct and continued communication with human crea- 
tures than they were ; a Word who spoke to prophets 
and holy men ; drew them away from the phantoms of 
sense; taught them that they were spirits; inspired 
them with cravings for the knowledge of God. Such a 
Person they traced through their Scriptures. Those 
perceived Him most who entered into the Scriptures 
most, and whose own minds were most alive. The 
formal Scribes, who were busy in framing a religion 
about God from the Bible, and the Elders, might never 
discern Him, though they might expect, some day or 
other, the coming of a great King and Messiah. But 
those who believed that God was speaking and ruling, 
who had some vision of His awfulness and absolute 
perfection, who yet felt that He had made men in His 
image, and meant them to know Him, could inquire 
earnestly how and in whom He governed and spake, 
how that awfulness and perfection could come into 
relation with creatures, and be apprehended by them. 
They did not confine the illuminations of this myste- 
rious Teacher to the wise of their own land, but they 
believed that the Law and the Prophets interpreted 



DISLIKE OF THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 101 

His relation to God and to the souls of men as no other 
books did, and that their nation was chosen to be an 
especial witness of His presence. 

But when the voice went from a band of despised 
men, ' The Word, or the Son of God, has been made 
flesh, and has dwelt among us,' — each of these classes, 
the Oriental, the Greek sage, the learned and devout 
Jew, as well as the popular idolater, had his own 
reason to be offended. Was not flesh the very seat of 
all evil, if not its cause ? Was not the great effort of the 
wise man, to disengage himself from fleshly appetites 
and fleshly illusions ? Had not the Divine Word 
especially chosen out a band of spiritual men to appre- 
hend secrets which the multitude, given up to the 
pursuits of the flesh and the world, must remain igno- 
rant of? These were arguments of prodigious weight 
for all who had pursued the deeper wisdom. The 
traditional worshippers, Jew or Gentile, did not need 
arguments. The force of habit and prescription was 
strong enough without them. The love of what was 
fleshly and -external was as mighty a motive with these 
for rejecting the new message, as the dread of it was 
with the others. They were told to turn from their 
dumb idols — and the Jew was given to understand that 
the rites in which he trusted had become his idols — to 
the living God. The Son of God was said to have 
taken flesh that He might reclaim all for the servants 
of His invisible Father. 



102 THE STKUGGLE IN THE CHEISTIAN CHUECH. 

Accordingly, the chief struggle of all minds in the 
first centimes after the Church had established itself in 
the world, was against this belief. I say emphatically 
and deliberately, in all minds, for the conflict was just 
as apparent among those who had been baptized, as 
among their opponents. As they became less alive to 
their own personal necessities, they had leisure to con- 
template the many sides which the Gospel presented to 
the student and to the world, the points of contact 
between it and surrounding opinions. Then this and 
that teacher arose to show how possible it was to 
regard Christ as one of the emanations from the unseen 
and absolute Essence — one of the stars which had pene- 
trated from the world of light into a world of darkness — 
one of the agents of a good Being, who had come to 
recover elect souls from fleshly corruption, and to make 
them capable of the highest knowledge. Then more 
accomplished teachers traced an order and scheme of 
emanations ; assigning to Christ a place amidst a 
multitude of qualities, energies, intellectual or physical 
principles. Then the modes of attaining the higher 
intuitions were duly set down and distinguished by 
each school for its own initiated disciples. But in 
every one, it was necessary to account for the appear- 
ance of our Lord in the world, without supposing Him 
to have been actually endowed with a human body. 
The connexion, it was said, was not real but fantastic; 
the Christ or the Son of God had descended for a while 



EEASONS AGAINST AN INCARNATION. 103 

into the body of Jesus at His baptism, leaving it before 
His passion, not actually participating in any of its 
infirmities. By some means or other, it must be ex- 
plained how a deliverer could come among men without 
being one of themselves, without being associated with 
that in which lay, as these teachers held, all defilement. 

I have expressed what I believe were the three 
maxims common to these various and dissentient schools. 
They held, first, that it was possible to know God 
without an Incarnation ; secondly, that it is not right 
or possible, that a perfectly good Being should be 
tempted as men are tempted ; thirdly, that all we have 
to look for, is a deliverer of some choice spirits out of 
the corruption and ruin of humanity, not a deliverer of 
man himself, of his spirit, his soul, and his body. 

These being the three cardinal dogmas of the teachers 
who departed from the general creed of the Church, the 
convictions which have sustained that creed cannot, 
perhaps, be expressed better than by reversing these 
propositions. First, We accept the fact of the Incarna- 
tion, because we feel that it is impossible to know the 
Absolute and Invisible God as man needs to know 
Him, and craves to know Him, without an Incarnation. 
Secondly, We receive the fact of an Incarnation, not 
perceiving how we can recognise a perfect Son of God, 
and Son of Man, such as man needs and craves for, unless 
fie were, in all points, tempted like as we are. Thirdly, 
We receive the fact of an Incarnation, because we ask 



104 FAITH WITHOUT AN INCARNATION. 

of God a Redemption, not for a few persons, from 
certain evil tendencies, but for humanity from all the 
plagues by which it is tormented. I will take these 
points in their order. 

1. Rapt devotees who have lived in perfect abstraction, 
have obtained a vision of a cloudless essence — of that 
which they felt was awful and infinite, and which they 
could adore in silence. Thoughtful and earnest seekers 
after wisdom, by careful study of all common things which 
are presented to them, by honest meditation upon the 
words which they use, by diligent efforts to escape from 
the appearances of the senses and the prejudices of the 
intellect, have been enabled to confess, and confidently 
to believe, that there is an Absolute and Eternal sub- 
stance at the ground of all things. Suffering men, 
tormented by pain of body and anguish of spirit, have 
perceived that there must be a health deeper than their 
sickness, a righteousness beneath their evil. Are we 
to slight any of these discoveries, or not to reckon them 
true and divine? Certainly not. Their worth is, I 
believe, unspeakable. But why were not those who 
obtained them satisfied with them ? Why did Heathen 
sages turn back with a look half of longing, half of 
loathing, to the popular legends ? They saw that there 
was in them a witness of the presence of Guardians, 
Brothers, Fathers, which they could not part with. To 
accept these, clothed in all the tempers and tendencies 
which they felt to be imperfect and distorted in them- 



CEAVINQ FOR ONE. 105 

selves, was impossible for their reason. But their 
reason demanded a standard for acts; the grace and 
righteousness which they saw in different divided hu- 
man images ; a foundation for the relations upon the 
preservation and purity of which society depend; an 
absolute Truth, which should not be merely dry exist- 
ence, merely an ultimate Hercules' Pillar of the Uni- 
verse, but living ; such as truth is when it comes forth 
in a guileless person. 

St. John says, ' We beheld His glory as of the only- 
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' Am 
I to believe this, asks the objector, on the testimony of 
a Galilean fisherman, or, for aught we know, of some 
later doctor assuming that guise? I answer, You are 
not to believe — you cannot believe — either fisherman 
or doctor, if the assertion itself is contrary to truth, to 
the laws of your being, to the order and constitution 
of the Universe in which you are living. They may 
repeat it till doomsday. It may come, as it did, with 
no authority, against the weight of all opinion, breaking 
through the- customs and prescriptions of centuries, 
defying the rulers of the world; or it may come clad 
with authority, with the prescriptions of centuries, with 
the help of rulers and public opinion ; it is all the 
same ; you cannot believe the words, however habitual 
and familiar they may be to you, if there is that in 
them which contradicts the spirit of a man that is in 
you, which does not address that with demonstration 



106 

and power. What we say is, that these words have 
not contradicted that spirit, "but have entered it with 
the demonstration of spirit, and with power. Men 
have declared, ' The actual creatures of our race do 
tell us of something which must "belong to us, must 
be most needful for us. A gentle human being does 
give us the hint of a higher gentleness ; a brave man 
makes us think of a courage far greater than he can 
exhibit. Friendships, sadly and continually inter- 
rupted, suggest the belief of an unalterable friendship. 
Every brother awakens the hope of a love stronger than 
any affinity in nature ; and disappoints it. Every 
father demands a love, and reverence, and obedience, 
which we know is his due, and which something in 
him as well as in us hinders us from paying. Every 
man who suffers and dies rather than lie, bears witness 
of a truth beyond his life and death, of which he has 
a glimpse.' Men have asked, 'Are all these delusions? 
Is this goodness we have dreamed of all a dream ? this 
Truth a fiction of ours? Is there no Brother, no Father 
beneath those, who have taught us to believe there must 
be such ? Who will tell us ? ' 

What St. John answers is this : ' No, they are not 
delusions. It has pleased the Father to show us what 
He is. A man did dwell among us — an actual man 
like ourselves, who told us that He had come from 
this Father, that he knew Him. And we believed 
Him. We could not help believing Him. There did 



WHY HE SPEAKS OF THE ONLY-BEGOTTEN. 107 

shine forth in His words, looks, acts, that which we 
felt to be the grace and the truth we were wanting to 
see. We were sure they were not of this earth ; that 
they did not spring from that body which was such as 
ours is. We should have been ready enough to call 
them His. But He did not — He said they were His 
Father's, that He could do nothing of Himself, only 
what He saw His Father do. That was the most 
wonderful token to us of all. We never saw any man 
before who took nothing to Himself, who would glorify 
Himself in nothing. Therefore, when we beheld Him, 
we felt that He was a Son, an Only-Begotten Son, and 
that the glory of One whom no man had seen or could see 
was shining forth in Him, and through Him upon us.' 

But why must we think that this person was more 
than a shrine of the Holiest ? why should we speak of 
Him as the One ? why should this name of l the Only- 
Begotten ' be bestowed upon him ? Again I say, 
1 Withhold it if your heart and conscience bid you do 
so. But do not deceive yourselves. The question is 
not any longer, whether there should be an Incarna- 
tion, whether God can manifest Himself in human 
flesh ; but what the Incarnation should be, in what 
kind of person we are to expect such a manifestation ; 
or whether He will diffuse His glory through many 
persons, never gathering it into one. With respect 
to the former question, the Church has always ad- 
mitted, the Apostles eagerly asserted, that the demand 



108 THE CARPENTER. 

which they made upon human faith was enormous. 
The glory of God revealing itself, not in a leader of 
armies, a philosopher, a poet, but in a carpenter — 
could anything he more revolting? There was no 
shrinking from the shameful confession. It was put 
forward prominently ; it was part of the Gospel which 
was preached to Jews, Greeks, Romans. And it was 
received as a Gospel, a message of good, not of ill, 
because the heart of man answered, " We want to 
see, not some side of earthly power elevated till it 
becomes celestial; we want not to see the qualities 
which distinguish one man from another, dressed out 
and expanded till they become utterly unlike anything 
which we can apprehend or attain to. We want to 
see absolute Goodness and Truth. We want to know 
whether they can bend to meet us. That which can- 
not do this is not what we mean by Goodness. It 
is not what we should call goodness in any man. 
That truth which belongs to a few and not to all, is 
not what we mean by Truth. The truest man we know, 
has a voice which commends itself to all, which 
reaches even the untrue, if it be but to frighten and 
incense him. The goodness which can stoop most, 
which becomes, in the largest sense, grace, — the truth 
which can speak to the inmost heart of the dullest 
human creature, is that which has for us the surest 
stamp of divinity." ' 

And here lies also the answer to the other question, 



THE FIRST-BORN AMONG MANY BRETHREN. 109 

* Why should not the Glory of God he diffused 
through many images ? why must it be concentrated 
in one ?' The practical reply which Christendom has 
made is : That it may be diffused through many, it 
must be concentrated in One. That there may be sons 
of God in human flesh ; men shining with the glory 
of God, reflecting His grace and truth ; there must be 
One Son who has taken human flesh, in whom that 
full glory dwelt, who was full of grace and truth. He, 
so we have proclaimed, who could say, My Father, 
could say Your Father ; he who could say, ' He has 
sent Me,' could say, ' So send I you.' And Christen- 
dom has not merely put this doctrine forth in a pro- 
position. She has been able to establish it by the 
experience of other men's truths; still more by the 
experience of her own errors. She can say, ' Take 
away the belief of the one incarnate Son of God and 
Son of Man, and all the heroes of the old world and of 
the new become merely so many men who have earned 
a right, by their superiority to the mass of their fellow- 
creatures, to despise them and trample upon them. 
Admit Him to be the centre of them, and they all fall 
into their places ; each has had his separate protest to 
bear, his appointed work to do. Though he may not 
have known in whose name he was ministering, his 
ministry, so far as it was one of help and blessing to 
mankind, so far as it implied any surrender of self- 
glory, may be referred to the man, may be hailed as 



110 THE SON TEMPTED AS WE AEE. 

proceeding from Him who took upon Him the form of 
a servant.' On the other hand, the Church can say, 
and should say, with the deepest humiliation, 'Look 
what miserable creatures the saints whom I have 
boasted of have become when, through their own crime, 
or the crime of those who have magnified them, it 
has been supposed that they had some independent 
merits, that their souls or their flesh had some sacred- 
ness of their own. Look through my whole history, 
and see whether the greatest confusions I have wrought 
in the world, the cruellest oppressions of which I have 
been guilty, have not been caused by my desire to 
exalt individual men into the place of the Christ; by 
my efforts to accomplish the very object which you hope 
to attain, when you have emancipated yourselves from 
my Creed.' 

2. But I pass to the second point, upon which the 
teachers who deny an Incarnation are at variance with 
the Apostles, and, I think, with the conscience of man- 
kind. They say, ' It destroys the idea of a Son of God, 
to suppose him in contact with the temptations of ordi- 
nary men.' We say, ' We cannot know Him to be 
the sinless Son of God, except He was in all points 
tempted like as we are.' This is that side of Chris- 
tian divinity which presented itself in all its power to 
Milton; Paradise was, according to him, regained by 
the endurance of temptation. His strict adherence to 
that one idea has given a unity to his second poem as 



PAEADISE REGAINED. Ill 

a work of art, which is wanting to its more magnifi- 
cent predecessor. And this unity it would not have 
received, if the soul of the writer had not been pene- 
trated and absorbed by the principle which it embodies. 
In it lay the strength and vitality of the age which he 
represented ; especially of the Puritan part of it. Men 
felt then that they had a battle with principalities and 
powers ; the test of the Son of God was, that he had 
entered into that battle, and had overcome in it. This 
thought might become too exclusive in their minds ; 
when it was separated from the one we have just been 
considering, it was liable to various perversions ; but I 
can scarcely conceive of any which has stood men in 
greater stead, or which we can less afford to dispense 
with. In fact, as I said in a former Essay, it seems to 
me that our actual forgetfulness of it, our effeminate 
timidity in acknowledging the existence of an Evil 
Spirit, our desire to represent all temptations as arising 
out of our nature, has been the cause of more supersti- 
tions, and more dishonourable thoughts of ourselves and 
of God, than, any other of our popular religious habits. 
But it is inevitable while there is the least reluctance 
to adopting the language of the New Testament, 
respecting our Lord's temptation. We cannot and dare 
not think that there is an actual spirit striking at the 
deepest root of our being, striving to separate us from 
what is good and true, if we do not believe that right- 
eousness is mightier, or if we suppose it has only a 



112 DISBELIEF OF CHRIST'S TEMPTATION. 

distant abstract superiority; not one which has been 
ascertained in an actual trial. If we suppose that the 
Son of God had any advantage in that trial, any 
power save that which came from simple trust in His 
Father, from the refusal to make or prove Himself His 
Son, instead of depending on His word and pledge, we 
shall not feel that any real victory has been won. And 
thence will come (alas! have come,) the consequences 
of supposing our flesh to be accursed in itself, our 
bodies or our souls to be subject to a necessary evil, 
and not to be holy creatures of God, made for all good. 
It is needful to repeat these maxims often ; for the 
habits and maxims which contradict them, are present- 
ing themselves in every variety of form and application, 
and are, I think, disturbing all our lives. I recur to 
them now, because I wish to put that doctrine of the 
Incarnation, which is so often denounced as an outrage 
upon reason, conscience, and experience, to every pos- 
sible test of conscience, reason, and experience. If there 
are any tests besides these, I do not ask that it should 
be tried by them ; these should not be declined by those 
who are continually appealing to them. Let them fairly 
and manfully ask themselves whether they do not evade 
either some great fact of daily experience, some evidence 
of actual misery and evil, or else some sure and authentic 
testimony of the heart that nothing in its principle and 
constitution can be evil, if they deny that there has been 
One, who, in our condition, was tempted by the Devil; 



DELIVERANCE OF ELECT SOULS. 113 

and that it was no imaginary temptation, but the real 
one, that which makes others real. Either I shall resort 
to some subterfuge to conceal my own evil, or I shall 
shrink from acknowledging my relation in hope and in 
sorrow to all human beings, or I shall invent some 
wretched substitute for the friend whom I have lost, if 
I am too refined to believe that there is One who showed 
himself in my flesh, to be a sharer of all God's truth 
and all my danger. 

3. This refinement in the Gnostical teachers had the 
closest connexion with that third characteristic of theirs 
to which I alluded, — their belief that Christ descended 
from some pure and ethereal world, to save certain elect 
souls from the pollutions of the flesh and the death which 
was consequent upon them; not to save the human race, 
above all, not to save that which was designated as the 
poor, ignoble, accursed body. 

The whole Gospel history was a most cruel insult t 
the feelings which this opinion denoted. Christ is re- 
presented as addressing Himself to multitudes. Those 
selected out of these multitudes to be His disciples, are 
ignorant men, not better, not more spiritual than their 
fellows. Those who gather about Him are publicans 
and sinners. He heals their bodies. He speaks of their 
bodies as bound by Satan. Pain, disease, death, are 
treated not as portions of a divine scheme, but as proofs 
that it has been violated ; as witnesses of the presence 
of a destroyer, who is to be resisted and cast out. These 

I 



114 REASONS FOR DISCARDING THE GOSPELS, 

are the startling phenomena of the Gospels, subver- 
sive of their credit and character with all persons who, 
on any grounds whatever, religious or philosophical, are 
maintaining an exclusive position, striving to separate 
themselves from other human beings, or wishing to dis- 
parage animal existence as the only way of exalting 
that which is intellectual or spiritual. The traditions 
of their country may induce some of these to suspend 
their condemnation of the documents, — nay, even to 
express unlimited belief in them. Some may hesitate, 
from sympathy with that in them which their hearts 
acknowledge as beautiful and divine. But when the 
chain of authority is broken for the one, when the other 
find books appealing more directly to their tastes and 
temper, because more dressed in the fashion of their own 
time, it will be seen how gladly they will welcome any 
mode of accounting for the Gospel narratives, which 
shall not compel them to accept what they do not like 
to think divine because it is so human. And here 
again it is to the great human heart that theology must 
make its appeal. That has found a witness for the Gos- 
pels and for the fact of an Incarnation in these offensive 
passages. That has clung to them because it demands 
one who comes into contact with its actual condition ; 
who relieves it of its actual woes ; who recognises not 
the exceptions from the race, but the lowest types of it, 
as brethren with Himself, and as the children of His 
Father ; who proves man to be a spiritual being, not by 



AND FOE HOLDING THEM. 115 

scorning his animal nature and his animal wants, but 
by entering into them, bearing them, suffering from 
them, and then showing how all the evils which affect 
man as an animal have a spiritual ground, how he must 
become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, that every- 
thing on earth may be pure and blessed to him. The 
Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the 
works of the devil; this is St. John's summary of the 
whole matter. He revealed the Father, and so in human 
flesh He destroyed the great calumny of the devil, that 
man has not a Father in heaven, that He is not alto- 
gether good, that He does not care for His creatures : 
He submits to all temptations in human flesh, and so 
proves that man is not the subject and thrall of the 
tempter. He in human flesh delivered spirits, souls, 
and bodies out of bondage, so affirming that the state into 
which the devil would draw them is not the state which 
is meant for them, that His own humanity is the stand- 
ard of that which each man bears, and is that to which 
man shall be raised. 

The evangelists say that when the Son of God was 
to be manifested to men, there did not come a great 
prophet to argue and prove the probability of an Incar- 
nation ; but there came a prophet preaching in the wil- 
derness, and saying, ' Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven 
is at hand.' I have said already that I believe such a call 
to repentance is the true way of bringing evidence for 
any one of the articles of Christian theology. When the 



116 PREACHING: OF REPENTANCE. 

hearts of the fathers are turned to the children, — when 
the doctor or pharisee feels himself on the level of the 
publican and the harlot, — then these articles come forth in 
their own native and divine might ; then the objections, 
which are merely the creatures of fancy or of pride, are 
scattered as chaff before the wind ; then those deeper 
objections, which touch the heart and reason, are seen to 
affect not the principles themselves, but only some 
earthly additions to them, which have weakened and 
subverted them. While we are frivolous, exclusive, 
heartless, no arguments ought to convince us of Christ's 
incarnation; they would carry their own condemnation 
with them, if they did. "When we are aroused to think 
earnestly what we are, what our relation to our fellow- 
men is, what God is, — the voice which says, ' The Word 
was made flesh and dwelt among us,' 'The Son of God 
was manifested that He might destroy the works of the 
Devil,' will no more be thought of as the voice of an 
apostle. We shall know that He is speaking to us Him- 
self, and that He is the Christ that should come into the 
world. 

Let no Unitarian suppose that these last words are 
pointed at him, — that I suppose lie has greater need of 
repentance than we have, because some special moral 
obliquity has prevented him from recognising the truth 
of the Incarnation. I had no such meaning ; I was 
thinking much more of the orthodox. I was considering 
how many causes hinder us from confessing with our 



WHY ORTHODOX AND UNORTHODOX NEED IT. 117 

hearts as well as our lips, that Christ has come in the 
flesh. The conceit of our orthodoxy is one cause. What- 
ever sets us in any wise above our fellow-men, is an 
obstacle to a hearty belief in the Man ; it must be taken 
from us before we shall really bow our knees to Him. I 
know not that if He were now walking visibly among us, 
He might not say that many a Unitarian was far nearer 
the kingdom of heaven than many of us ; less choked 
with prejudice, less self-confident, more capable of recog- 
nising the great helper of the wounded man who has 
fallen among thieves, than we priests or Levites are, 
because more ready to go and do likewise. I cannot 
say that this might not be so ; I often suspect that it 
would be so ; and, therefore, I certainly did not intend to 
convey the impression that the moral disease at the root 
of their most vehement intellectual denials, is, neces- 
sarily, a malignant one. 

But though I do not think that such a call as we are 
told went forth from the lips of John the Baptist, to 
prepare the way for Christ, is less needful for us than for 
them, I should be far indeed from wishing to shut them 
out from so great a benefit. We all want it, I think, 
for the same reason. When St. John explains the object 
of the Baptist's mission, he does not use the language of 
the other evangelists. He says, ' He came to bear witness 
of the Light, that all men through Him might believe.' 
This is not a mere equivalent for the words, ' Kepent, 
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ;' but it gives us 



118 THE LIGHT WITHIN. 

the innermost force of those words ; it takes away their 
vagueness ; it shows why one person, as much as another, 
had need to hear them. ' There is a light within you, 
close to you. Do you know it? Are you coming to it? 
Are you desiring that it should penetrate you through 
and through ? Oh, turn to it ! Turn from these idols 
that are surrounding you, — from the confused, dark 
world of thoughts within you ! It will reveal yourself 
to you ! It will reveal the world to you ! ' ' What do 
you mean ? ' asks the well-instructed, formally, habitu- 
ally religious man. ' My conscience, I suppose.' ' Call 
it that, or what you please ; hut in Grod's name, my 
friend, do not cheat yourself with a phrase. I mean a 
reality ; I mean that which has to do with your inner- 
most being ; I mean something which does not proceed 
from you or belong to you ; but which is there searching 
you and judging you. Nay ! stay a moment. I mean 
that this light comes from a Person, — from the King and 
Lord of your heart and spirit, — from the Word, — the 
Son of God. When I say, Kepent ; I say, Turn and 
confess His presence. You have always had it with 
you. You have been unmindful of it.' 

Such words would startle some Unitarians, but not 
more than those who are settled on the lees of a com- 
fortable orthodoxy. The cries of ' Mysticism,' ' Lore 
imported from the Alexandrian fathers,' ' Utterly incon- 
sistent with all sound modern philosophy,' ' Derived from 
our own conceits, not from the Bible,' ' Fenelon, Madame 



MATERIALISTS. 119 

Gruion, Jacob Bohme,' &c, would rise just as loudly 
from one as from the other. The teacher, if he happens 
to know anything of the persons he is accused of copy- 
ing, may tell what he knows ; but he will do better if he 
delivers his message simply to those who have need of 
it. They will discover in themselves whether it is a poor 
plagiarism ; they will know whether it fills them with 
mystical conceits, or scatters them. If he has courage 
to go on, he will find a response, not only in those who 
have been told, from their youth upward, that the voice 
of conscience is Christ's voice, but from a number of 
those who are nominally and in profession materialists ; 
who cannot conceive of any spiritual communication 
whatsoever, who think that the testimonies of conscience 
are the echoes of words addressed to the ear. For 
theories signify little when the question is one of fact 
and moral demonstration. They disappear, as they do 
before any great and decisive experiment in physics, 
and adjust themselves, not at once but gradually, to the 
law which has been brought to light. And a materialist 
who has been honest with himself, has sought to do 
right, and has not used phrases which for him had no 
meaning, is quite as likely as another man to yield to 
such evidence. 

It is necessary for my present purpose to make this 
statement ; for I cannot disguise from myself the truth 
that there are many, not only among Unitarians, but 
among us, who would be simply bewildered by the 



120 THE MANIFESTATION AND THE MANIFESTED 

proposition, ' Christ took flesh.' What Christ? they 
woul<} ask, if they were not withheld by some fear. c Is 
not Jesus of Nazareth the Christ?' And this difficulty is 
not relieved, but increased, by the emphasis with which 
the ablest, most devout, and most learned divines, both 
here and in Germany, are dwelling on the words ' God 
manifest in the flesh.' I do not mean that these divines 
care whether or not that precise expression occurs in the 
Epistle to Timothy ; whether the line in the O can be 
detected with the aid of spectacles or not ; they are far 
too manly and too well grounded in their faith to make 
it depend upon this or any other philological crux. 
They take these words as expressing the very sense of 
the Gospel and of the New Testament. I do not think 
they can be stronger in that persuasion than I am; 
but I cannot help perceiving — and a consideration of 
Unitarian difficulties has especially led me to this 
conclusion — that if, in their eagerness to set forth the 
manifestation, they take no pains to declare who is the 
manifester, they will leave an impression on a number 
of minds, the very opposite to that which they seek to 
produce. They will lead people to suppose that the 
Image of the Holy One had no reality till it was pre- 
sented through a human body to men, or at least, that 
till then, this Image had no relation to the creature 
who is said in Scripture to be formed in it. By this 
means the whole of the Old Testament economy, instead 
of being fulfilled in the revelation of the Son of God, 



st. john's method. 121 

becomes hopelessly divided from it. But, what is worse 
still, by this means the heart and conscience of human 
beings become separated from that revelation. It stands 
outside, as if it were presented to the eye, not to them ; 
as if those who saw Christ in the flesh must really have 
known Him for that reason, whereas every sentence of 
the Gospels is telling us that they did not. 

I conceive the method of St. John is far more scien- 
tific, and also far more human and practical. He de- 
clares to us the Word as God, and also with God ; as 
Him by whom all things were created ; as Him whose 
Life was the Light of men ; whose light was shining in 
the darkness, and the darkness did not take it down 
into itself; whose Light was witnessed by the visible 
teacher, that all men might believe ; Who was in the 
world, though the world knew Him not ; Who came to 
his own house, and its inmates did not receive Him; 
Who gave those who did receive him power to become 
sons of God, being born not of flesh nor of blood, nor 
of the will of man, but of God ; Who at last was made 
flesh and dwelt among men, and in Whom the glory of 
the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, 
was seen. Quite aware how strange this method must 
seem to many of ourselves, still stranger to the Uni- 
tarian, I have yet tried to follow it, because it appeals, 
I think, both to the reason and to the conscience, and 
because I should be very inconsistent if I supposed that 
the Light which lighteneth every man did not lighten 



122 OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNIPRESENCE. 

the Unitarian, or that he may not come to it and dis- 
cover whence it flows. Nor do I think that any one of 
the grounds upon which I have rested my defence of 
our creed concerning the Incarnation, will be entirely 
unintelligible to him. 

1. I have told him before, that I think he is exposed 
to a danger, of which he least dreams, — that of ho- 
nouring the Son, not as he honours the Father, but 
above Him. I would now ask him seriously to con- 
sider, whether the best part of the honour he ever has 
paid to the Father, that which has been most real 
and akin to his heart, has not been derived from the 
image which was presented to him in Christ? He 
may have used some large phrases about Omnipotence, 
or Omnipresence. I do not say that they conveyed no 
meaning to his mind. But was it such a meaning — so 
deep, so penetrating, so satisfactory to his moral in- 
stincts, — as that which was brought to him by the story 
of a person actually, thoroughly, inwardly and out- 
wardly righteous ? If the quality of mere power 
became more sacred and venerable in his mind than 
that of righteousness, or mercy, or truth, will he not 
have suspected himself? will he not have said, ' I am 
yielding to a disease, I am borrowing my notions from 
the phantoms of greatness and glory, which the world 
worships ; I am forgetting the moral standard which I 
profess to set up?' And if (as I think), power is in- 
tended to command a reverence, and must always 



123 

command it, though in subordination to that which 
determines its ends, have not the instances of calm 
power, recorded in the Gospel, — of Christ ruling the 
waves, for instance, or feeding the multitude — appealed 
more directly to the faculty which receives that im- 
pression, and bows to it, than any such mere ab- 
straction as this of Omnipotence? These are hints 
which I should like any Unitarian who wishes to give 
a fair account to himself of his own emotions and con- 
victions, steadily to follow out, not minding whither 
they lead him. They may not lead him at once, or for 
a long time, to accept our language, ' of one substance 
with the Father ; ' he may make a great many attempts 
to avoid it, by speaking of a Unity of purpose or of 
will. But if he once comes to understand himself about 
Unity of purpose and will, and carefully to consider 
what that involves, I have no fear that he will under- 
stand thoroughly what the Church intends by Unity of 
Substance. 

2. Nor do I fear that the younger Unitarian, especially, 
will discard what I have said of Christ entering into 
our temptations, as worthless and unmeaning. What 
I do fear for him, as I have told him already, is, that he 
may adopt a kind of sentimental talk, very prevalent in 
our day, about struggles and conflicts of the spirit, — as if 
these were striking phenomena to observe in men of 
other ages, who are entitled to our patronage, and in a 
qualified sense to our admiration, for having passed 



124 CALVINISTS AND UNITAKIANS. 

through tempests, which we can contemplate and criticise 
from a calm and secure height. I know this temptation ; 
I do not warn them of it as if / were on a calm height 
out of its reach. It assaults us all continually ; I can- 
not tell how often I may have yielded to it while writing 
this book. But I can testify that the only escape I 
have ever found from it, is in the belief that a real and 
' strong ' Son of God encountered the enemy of me, and 
of all the men who are living now, or ever have lived. 
While I hold fast that confidence, I cannot suppose that 
the fight which our fathers had to fight is a different one 
from ours. I cannot fancy that I have acquired any posi- 
tion or any skill, which gives me the slightest advantage 
over them, or on the other hand, that our circumstances 
are the least to be deplored ; that the former days were 
better than these. I must believe that the struggle 
becomes intenser as it approaches nearer to the final de- 
cision ; but the thought of that decision, and that it will 
be for, not against, the race whose nature Christ took, 
ought to make us more trusting, not more self-confident, 
than those were who have finished their course. 

3. If I dared to indulge in a mere argumentum ad 
hominem, I might hope to make much of my third pro- 
position in discoursing with a Unitarian. He is pledged 
to hostility against the Calvinistical theory of election ; 
he has often fraternised with Churchmen on that ground. 
But I think that he and the Arminians of my own com- 
munion, have been equally to blame, for the course 



THE TWO ASPECTS OF CALVINISM. 125 

which they have taken in this controversy. They have 
complained of the Calvinist partly for his exclusions, 
partly for his zeal in proclaiming the will of God as the 
sole cause of man's redemption and salvation. Because 
I dislike and repudiate his exclusions, I would follow 
him with all my heart and soul in that proclamation. 
If man is held to choose God, and not God to choose 
man, I see no deliverance from the darkest views of His 
character and of our destiny. Some of the Unitarians 
appear to be making this discovery ; at least I judge so, 
from a very impressive sermon by Mr. Martineau, on the 
words : ' Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen 
you.' 

Before, then, we enter into any alliance, offensive or 
defensive, against Calvinism, it must be clearly under- 
stood that we do not mean this side of Calvinism ; for 
that is as much presumed in the doctrine that God 
redeems mankind, as in the doctrine that He redeems cer- 
tain elect souls out of mankind. Every redeemed person 
must, according to me as much as according to them, 
refer every good that he knows, that is in him, that he 
does, that befals him, to the Father of Lights, — must con- 
sider his will as freed by Him from a bondage, and as 
freed, that it may become truly a servant. Nay, so 
strongly do I feel this, that I see no refuge from the 
exclusiveness of some of those who consider them- 
selves very moderate Calvinists — especially from those 
favourite divisions of theirs which seem to make the 



126 EXCLUSIVENESS OF VAEIOUS KINDS. 

1 believer ' something different from a man, and so to 
take from him the very truth, which he has to believe — 
but by recalling the strong and energetic statements of 
the earlier Calvinists, respecting the one root and origin 
of all faith, as well as of all right acts. But this is not 
all. I have no right to denounce the exclusiveness of 
the Calvinists, unless I am willing to renounce all that 
may cleave to myself. The Unitarian may fairly say 
to me, ' Give up your Anglican exclusiveness if you 
wish me to think you sincere in your complaints of 
them.' And I, if I am striving to do so, may 
turn upon him and say, ' Give up your Gnostical 
exclusiveness, your Emersonian exclusiveness, your 
notions of a high intellectual election, if you wish me 
to think you sincere in your complaints of Calvinists 
or of Anglicans.' I do not believe that we shall any of 
us comply with these demands, each of which is per- 
fectly reasonable and righteous, unless we heartily and 
unfeignedly acknowledge that Christ, the Son of God, 
has taken the nature of every man. With that faith, 
when it has possessed our whole being, exclusiveness of 
any kind cannot dwell. 

To conclude. I shall be content to put the whole cause 
on this issue. Let it be considered earnestly what has 
made the difference between the belief concerning God 
a nd concerning Man, which has prevailed in Christendom, 
and that which exists in any part of heathendom. To 
understand the difference, study as carefully the resem- 



THE TEST. 127 

blances, — all the dark and horrible thoughts respecting 
our Father in heaven, and our fellow-creatures on earth, 
which exist among us, and which we have adopted from 
Heathenism. Let all allowance you please be made for 
varieties of races, and for progress of civilization, on con- 
dition that you are not satisfied with these formula, but 
are willing to regard them as indications of facts, which 
need to be explained. And then let it be seen whether the 
belief that the Jesus Christ set forth in the Gospels is 
the express Image of God, and the Image after which 
man is formed, has not been the secret of all that is con- 
fessedly high, pure, moral in our convictions ; the de- 
parture from that belief, and the attempt to deduce the 
nature of God from some philosophical generalization, 
or from some heroical man, or from a number of men, 
or from ourselves, has not been at the root of all that is 
cruel in our doctrine, as well as of that which is most 
feeble and base in our practice. 



ESSAY VII. 



ON THE ATONEMENT. 



It will be evident, I hope, by this time, on what 
grounds I object to the so-called Theology of Conscious- 
ness. Not, surely, because I am not anxious to observe 
all the experiences and consciousnesses which the his- 
tory of the world bears witness of. Not because I do 
not desire that all these should be understood, as they 
can only be understood, through the conscience of each 
man. Not that I do not ask of theology that it should 
explain these consciousnesses, and clear and satisfy that 
individual conscience. 

But I find that a theology which is based upon con- 
sciousness, which is derived out of it, never can fulfil 
these conditions. In former Essays, I have tried to 
indicate the feelings and demands of a man who has 
been awakened to know sin in himself. He asks for 
deliverance from a plague, which seems part of his own 
existence. He asks that some power, which is crushing 
him and vanquishing him, and making free thought and 



CONSCIOUSNESSES. 129 

action impossible, may be put down. He is in despair, 
because he is sure that he is at war, not merely with a 
Sovereign Will, but with a perfectly good will. He is 
convinced that, in some way or other, he has a righteous 
cause, though he is so deeply and inwardly evil. He 
thinks a righteous Being must be on his side, though 
he has grieved Him, and been unrighteous. He thinks 
he has an Advocate, and that the mind of this Advocate 
cannot be opposed to the mind of the Lord of all, the 
Creator of the universe, but must be the counterpart of 
it. He thinks that the true Son of God must be his. 
Kedeemer. He thinks He must stand at some day on 
the earth, to assert His Father's righteous dominion 
over it, and to redeem it from its enemies. 

Here are strange, conflicting ' consciousnesses,' all of 
which are actually found in human beings, all of which 
must be heeded, which will make themselves manifest 
in strange ways if they are not. The consciousness of 
sin will lead to a consciousness of consequences flowing 
from sin, stretching into the furthest future. And when 
this consciousness tries to construct a theology for itself, 
those consequences, apprehensible, tangible, material, 
will determine the character of the theology. How can 
I escape from these ? will be the question. Who shall 
sever the consequences from the cause ? The conscious- 
ness that the Creator has linked the one to the other, 
suggests the thought that pain, suffering, misery, are 
especially His work, the signs which denote His feelings 

K 



130 A THEOLOGY BUILT UPON THEM. 

towards His creatures. The consciousness of a tyrant 
and oppressor leads to the supposition that He is that 
tyrant and oppressor. The consciousness of an Advo- 
cate, leads to the supposition that He may be the 
instrument of delivering us out of the hand of the 
Creator, of saving us from the punishment which the 
Creator has appointed for transgression. The con- 
sciousness that we share our sin with our fellow-crea- 
tures, and that we are obnoxious to a punishment which 
belongs equally to them, leads to the reflection, ' How 
can we pat ourselves into a different position from 
theirs? how can we escape from the calamities with 
which God has threatened them ? ' 

What I wish the reader to observe is, that in each 
of these cases a notion or maxim respecting theology is 
likely to be generalized from the consciousness, which 
will oppose and outrage the conscience. Building on his 
own ground, assuming all his own vague and contra- 
dictory impressions as data, the man of necessity works 
out a system, on which he afterwards gazes with horror, 
from which he longs to break loose, which he charges 
priests and doctors with having created. No doubt they 
have contributed their wicked aid to the fabric ; their 
guilt is heavier than that of the poor, bewildered crea- 
tures who have consulted them. But their guilt has 
consisted in the willingness which they have shown 
to create a religion out of consciousnesses; to endorse 
all the conceptions and conclusions about God which 



THE SIN OF PEIESTS. 131 

the diseased heart fashions for itself, while they have 
a witness within them of truths which contradict these 
conceptions and conclusions ; to supply intellectual 
links which may fasten together what would be loose, 
incoherent, fragmentary fancies ; to devise rules, and 
ethical practices, which may meet the morbid and 
selfish cravings of the heart, and be justified by the 
theory the understanding had moulded from them; 
finally, to stamp with the name, dignity, and sacredness 
of faith, that which is grounded, in great part, upon fear 
and distrust. 

I believe that all priests, in all lands, are chargeable 
with this great crime of accommodating themselves to 
the .carnal notions and tendencies of those whom they 
might have raised and educated, because I believe all 
have had an intuition of a higher truth, which it was 
their calling to proclaim, and which alone gave substance 
to the opinions with which they and their disciples dis- 
figured it. But I never dare deny that this crime has 
been greatest in the priests of Christendom, precisely 
because I hold that they have a theology revealed from 
Heaven, which perfectly satisfies those demands of the 
human heart ; which explains to men the contradictions 
in their own impressions and experiences ; which pre- 
sents such a God as the conscience witnesses there must 
be and is, not such a one as the understanding tries 
to shape out from its own reflections on the testimony 
of the conscience : which shows what the relation be- 



132 THE POPULAR DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE. 

tween Him and men is, what the cause of the separation 
between Him and men is, what He has done to esta- 
blish the relation, to destroy the separation. 

I have reached the subject which is the test of all 
that I have been saying hitherto. Those who cry for a 
theology based upon consciousness, which shall supersede 
the theology of Christendom, say that the doctrines re- 
specting sacrifice and atonement which prevail in Chris- 
tendom, among Protestants as well as Romanists, prove 
more clearly than anything else what need there is of the 
reform they seek. ' These doctrines,' they say, ' darken 
- the sense of right and wrong in the minds of Christians ; 
' bewilder their understandings ; sanction the most false 
1 conceptions concerning sin, the most cruel conceptions 
' concerning God. The conscience of human beings is in 
' revolt against them. Civil authority owns that it can 
1 defend them no longer. Ecclesiastical authority tries 
1 to defend them. They have a certain public opinion 
6 on their side; that which has resisted in every age every 
' great moral improvement, that which has sustained 
1 every false religion. They derive a support from those 
1 who half believe them, who dare not say how much of 
' them they do not believe. But they are doomed; 
' texts of Scripture will not preserve from burial that 
4 which is already dead. No appeal to the verdict of 
' centuries will galvanise doctrines which do not repre- 
1 sent our convictions. We must have a theology 
' which embodies them, or none.' 



WHENCE ITS CORRUPTIONS HAYE PROCEEDED. 133 

On this point I join issue with them. I say that they 
are right in imputing to Eomanists and Protestants a 
system of notions, — parts of it common to both, parts 
peculiar to each — which deserves the epithets they be- 
stow on it; which does outrage the conscience, which does 
misrepresent the character of God, which does generate 
a fearful amount of insincere belief, positive infidelity, — 
also, I think, of immorality. I see, with them, that these 
notions are becoming more and more intolerable to 
thoughtful and earnest men ; that those who are neither, 
often maintain them merely because they do not care to 
look at them, or to question themselves about them. I 
cannot conceal from myself that our want of courage in 
saying whether we regard these as part of our creed, or 
no, is leading thousands to identify them with it, and to 
reject it as well as them. But I maintain that these 
notions are not parts of God's Revelation, of Christian 
Theology, of the old Creeds, but belong to that Theology 
of Consciousness which modern enlightenment would 
establish in place of these ; that their rise can be dis- 
tinctly and historically traced to this source ; that the 
protest on the part of the conscience against them . in 
other days, has been a confession of its own inability to 
construct a Theodicsea, a claim that God should remove 
its confusions by revealing Himself; that the protest 
of the conscience against them in our day is of the same 
kind, and must have the same issue, if it is not unnatu- 
rally silenced ; that Christian theology, as expressed in 



134 ORDINARY HISTORY OF ROMANISM. 

the language of the Bible and of the Creeds, construed 
most simply, is a deliverance from these oppressive 
notions, and the only one which has yet been or ever 
will be found. 

1. The account which I have given of the way in which 
different consciousnesses, beginning with the conscious- 
ness of sin, have worked themselves out into a scheme, 
is precisely that which has been given over and over 
again by liberal historians, who have wished to describe 
the growth of the Romish system. ' Men,' they have 
said, ' who were stung with the recollection of evil acts, 
thought they might do something to win the favour or 
avert the wrath of the Divine Being. They must make 
sacrifices, the greatest they could think of, or which any 
could suggest to them, that their sins might be forgiven. 
What sacrifices these should be, they could very im- 
perfectly guess ; they must ask wiser people to tell them. 
They found an organized hierarchy established for the 
very purpose of explaining the relations between the 
visible and the invisible world, and of maintaining the 
intercourse between them. Those who composed it 
ought to know what they should do. And these devised 
indulgences to soothe the pains of the diseased patients, 
penances that irritated them. At first, the suggestion 
might be merely benevolent, even suitable to the case, 
grounded on a knowledge of the symptoms. Then came 
in the love of power, with the discovery how much of 
that (which presented itself to the vulgarer priest in the 



NECESSARY LIMITATIONS OF IT. 135 

form of material riches) might be obtained by catering 
to the cravings of a morbid appetite. If the regular 
practitioner did not meet them, popular confessors ap- 
pearing in new orders supplied the defects of the original 
system. But neither one nor the other were sufficient. 
The poor offender felt, all confused as he was, that his 
sacrifices could never of themselves move the mind of 
God. He must ask the aid of those who had prevailed 
in the fight, in which he seemed likely to be worsted. 
Saints must be invoked, who would themselves invoke 
the Highest of all to be merciful. A number of accidents 
of time, place, occupation, education, would dictate which 
should be besought by any particular person. The 
Virgin Mother would be a more general pleader for the 
human, especially for the female, suppliant. Those who 
habitually sought her intercession with the Divine Son, 
might hope that His infinite sacrifice would remove 
the sins which they had contracted, after the great 
original sin had been purged away in baptism.' 

Something like this is the natural history of Roman- 
ism, past and present, which we find in books not pre- 
tending to be specially theological, but trying to look 
at the subject fairly, from an ordinary human point of 
view. To make the statement quite fair, I suppose, most 
persons would admit — I, at least, as a very vehement 
Protestant, should — that there is an immense amount 
of moral and spiritual influences acting upon those who 
are tied and bound in this system, which does not 



136 THE EVIL HOW DETECTED. 

proceed from it, and is not expressed "by it. Romanist3 
will be found in no ambiguous phrases acknowledging 
the love of God and His free grace as the only source 
of good human acts, submission to His will as the only 
acceptable sacrifice. They will make these confessions, 
not as if they were conceding something to us, but as the 
proper expression of their own faith, as implied in the 
very nature of a Catholic church ; they will prove the 
sincerity of them by their lives. All such facts are to 
be admitted, not reluctantly, not as if it was a shock to 
our belief that we were obliged to make them, but with 
the most unspeakable delight ; as well for the sake of 
those to whom they apply, as because they prove how 
utterly the notions which oppose these confessions are 
at war with the deepest and truest convictions of men — 
how unnatural it is to associate them with any faith. 
Multiply proofs of this kind a thousandfold, you increase 
the evidence that it is a duty and a necessity to strike 
continually at a cancer which is eating out the heart of 
Christendom, the poisonous quality and deadly effects 
of which our most vehement Protestant declaimers do 
not exaggerate but underrate. 

2. Nor can I discover that those declaimers are the least 
mistaken in the explanation which they commonly give 
of the means whereby this mischief was detected, and by 
which some were enabled to escape it. They say that 
when Luther found out that he was a sinner, when he knew 
that fact in the length and breadth of it, — not by the 



STORY OF LUTHEE. 137 

hearing of the ear, but by his own tremendous expe- 
rience, — he could no longer be content with any of the 
priestly inventions for putting away sin ; that he then 
felt that he could only be delivered from it if God de- 
livered him ; that he demanded to know whether He had 
proclaimed forgiveness of sin ; whether there was any 
sacrifice which He had appointed and accepted ? They 
say that Luther found the answers to these questions in 
the Bible : that he was content when he was told, on its 
authority, that the Son of God had taken away sin ; that 
in Him God had made known His mind and will to His 
creatures ; that this might be received and preached to 
all men as His Gospel. The person who differs most 
with Luther, must accept this as a statement of noto- 
rious facts ; it is as much acknowledged by Michelet as 
by Marheinecke, or Merle d'Aubigne'. I accept it also 
as being entirely in accordance with internal evidence, — 
with the law which I am endeavouring to establish. 
Luther's conscience did not make a system. It pro- 
tested against one which had been made in compliance 
with apparent necessities of the conscience. It said 
that the real necessity of the conscience was, that God 
should speak to it — declare Himself to it, — should pro- 
claim Himself as its reconciler — should show how and in 
whom He had accomplished that work on its behalf. 

3. But I admitted that there were grave and earnest 
protests against much of what is called the Protestant 
doctrine of the Atonement. " You hold," it is said, "that 



138 COMPLAINTS OF THE PEOTESTANT DOCTEINE. 

God had condemned all His creatures to perish, because 
they had broken His law ; that His justice could not be 
satisfied without an infinite punishment; that that in- 
finite punishment would have visited all men, if Christ 
in His mercy to men had not interposed and offered 
Himself as the substitute for them ; that by enduring 
an inconceivable amount of anguish, He reconciled the 
Father, and made it possible for Him to forgive those 
who would believe. This whole statement," the objector 
continues, " is based on a certain notion of justice. It 
professes, to explain, on certain principles of justice, what 
God ought to have done, and what He actually has done. 
And this notion of justice outrages the conscience to 
which you seem to offer your explanation. You often 
feel that it does. You admit that it is not the kind of 
justice which would be expected of men. And then you 
turn round and ask us what we can know of God's jus- 
tice ; how we can tell that it is of the same kind with 
ours ? After arguing with us, to show the necessity of 
a certain course, you say that the argument is good for 
nothing ; we are not capable of taking it in ! Or else you 
say that the carnal mind cannot understand spiritual 
ideas. We can only answer, We prefer our carnal notion 
of justice to your spiritual one. We can forgive a fellow- 
creature a wrong done to us, without exacting an equi- 
valent for it ; we blame ourselves if we do not ; we 
think we are offending against Christ's command, who 
said, ' Be ye merciful as your Father in Heaven is mer- 



139 

ciful,' if we do not. We do not feel that punishment is 
a satisfaction to our minds ; we are ashamed of ourselves 
when we consider it is. We may suffer a criminal to be 
punished, but it is that we may do him good, or assert a 
principle. And if that is onr object, we do not suffer an 
innocent person to prevent the guilty from enduring the 
consequences of his guilt, by taking them upon himself. 
Are these moral maxims in our case, or are the opposing 
maxims moral ? If they are moral, should we, because 
God is much more righteous than we can imagine or 
understand, attribute to Him what we should consider a 
very low righteousness, or unrighteousness, in us ?" 

These questions are asked on all sides of us. It is 
obvious that they are most deep and awful questions. 
They touch upon the very principles of morality and 
godliness. I know well how clergymen persuade them- 
selves that it is right and safe to pass them by. They 
say, " Such doubts bewilder the minds of our flocks upon 
a doctrine which is, of all others, the most vital. Let 
one of these objectors," they say, " go with us to the 
bedsides of some of the humblest, purest Christians. 
We will show them those who have grown up from 
their childhood in love and good works. We will show 
them penitent Magdalens. The testimony of both will 
be the same. ' To lose this doctrine, of God having 
reconciled sinners to Himself, would be to lose every- 
thing. Without it we do not care for life here or here- 
after. We do not know what life here or hereafter 



140 THE DYING PENITENT. 

could mean.' Are we to rob such souls as these 
of their treasure, "because some captious people find 
the casket which contains it disagreeable to their 
pride — because they cannot bend their reasons to the 
Cross ?" 

I answer, No ; you are to defend this treasure to the 
death. You are to let no man take it from those suffering 
spirits, or — if you have it — from yourselves. You are to 
desire that all, you among the rest, should be brought, 
with all your notions and theories, to the Cross. But 
what is the treasure which you see your humble, dying 
saints grasping with such intense resolution ? Is it not the 
belief which is expressed in our collect for Passion Week, 
that • God of His tender love towards mankind sent His 
Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take our flesh upon 
Him, that all mankind should follow the example of His 
great humility ? ' Is not this Love of God, this perfect 
obedience of Christ to His Father's loving will, the 
ground of all their confidence, their hope, their hu- 
mility? Has their confidence, their hope, their humility, 
anything whatever to do with the theory that has fastened 
itself to this doctrine of Atonement, and, in many minds, 
has taken the place of it ? Do you hear any allusion to 
it amidst the pauses of that sepulchral cough ? Does 
the feverish hand clasp yours with thankful joy, when 
you speak of a Divine justice delighting in infinite 
punishment? Does the loving, peaceful eye respond 
to the idea that the Son of God has delivered His 



THE EELIGIOUS FINE LADY. 141 

creatures from their Father's determination to execute 
His wrath upon them ? 

But go from the dying chamber to the house across 
the street, or, it may be, to the fashionable withdrawing 
room below, and there you will find what hold this 
doctrine has upon your people. There you may hear 
some religious dowager, with the newspaper, from which 
she derives her faith and her charity, on the ottoman 
beside her, denouncing a youth just returned from 
Cambridge, and as you enter, imploring your help in 
delivering him from the horrible scepticism into which 
he has fallen, respecting the faith which is her only 
consolation in time and eternity. That faith is not 
in the tender love of God, in the obedience of Christ, 
in His great humility ; it is in the theory of the satis- 
faction He has offered to offended Sovereignty, or, as 
she calls it, justice. I do not speak — I dare not — of 
the effects of her admonitions upon the young man 
against whom they are directed. I do not speculate 
upon the fearful question, how soon he may fulfil all 
her anticipations, may plunge into infidelity, or fly from 
it to Romanism ; or what mercy of God — melior fortuna 
parente — may save him from either calamity. I speak 
of her. You are afraid, my brother clergyman, of dis- 
turbing her peace of mind. Is your fear a right and a 
kind one ? Should not you wish to shake such a peace 
of mind as that ? Would not an old prophet of Israel 
have tried to shake it to the very ground ? Would he 



142 TEST OF THE POPULAK NOTIONS. 

not have burst forth with some woe against careless 
women, who cover themselves with a covering which is 
not of God's Spirit, — who make the souls sad which God 
has not made sad, and who hinder the wicked from turn- 
ing from their evil way by promising them life ? Would 
not Luther have torn the fine rags of such a profession 
very rudely to pieces ? would he have rested till he had 
made the comfortable believer ask herself whether she 
actually believed anything ? 

I put these two cases, because the comparison of them 
shows, I think, whence these Protestant theories are 
derived. The deep sense of personal evil in the real 
penitent, leads her straight to an atonement originating 
in the love of God ; the half-consciousness of sin, which 
merely begets a dread of its punishment, leads the fine 
religious lady as directly to the notion of a satisfaction 
and substitution to the Divine vengeance. I do not say 
that there are not very many persons in whom the two 
beliefs are mixed in all degrees and proportions ; but the 
preponderance of one or the other may, I think, be ascer- 
tained by the test I have used. And, therefore, as it 
becomes tolerably certain that some day or other they 
will be separated in every one, and as, in the meantime, 
it is infinitely important to the belief and honesty of 
a large portion of our younger fellow-countrymen that 
the difference between them should be pointed out 
broadly and clearly now, I shall proceed to show that 
certain principles, which Komanists and Protestants 



GEOUND OF THE SACRIFICE. 143 

both recognise as orthodox, and as expressed in their 
Bible and their Creed, absolutely prevent us, as it 
seems to me, from acquiescing in those explanations 
of the doctrine, which both in popular and scholastic 
teachings have been identified with it. 

1. It is involved in the very method of theology, as 
the Bible and the creeds set it forth to us, that the will 
of God should be asserted as the ground of all that is 
right, true, just, gracious. There is no acknowledged 
difference of opinion on this point. It would be ac- 
counted heresy in all orthodox schools to deny that 
the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of men ; that 
the Father set forth the Son to be the propitiation for 
our sins ; that Christ, by his life, proved that God is 
light, and that in Him is no darkness at all. These decla- 
rations of St. John are admitted as fundamental truths, 
to which all others must do homage, which no other pas- 
sages can contradict. All I ask is, that we may hold fast 
this profession without wavering; that no feeble com- 
promiser may be suffered to come in and say, ' All this 
is true in a sense,' without telling us in what sense; 
and that if it is such a sense as clearly is not meant to 
govern all our thoughts, determinations, conclusions, he 
may be dismissed as one who has no business to call 
himself an orthodox man. 

2. It is admitted in all schools, Komanist and Pro- 
testant, which do not dissent from the Creed, that 
Christ the Son of God was in heaven and earth, one 



144 ESSENCE OP THE SACRIFICE. 

with the Father, one in will, purpose, substance ; and 
that on earth His whole life was nothing else than an 
exhibition of this will, an entire submission to it. 
There is no dispute among orthodox people about this 
point, more than about the other. And there is no 
dispute as to the principle being a fundamental one, 
that on which the very nature of Christ's sacrifice must 
depend, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
declares that it does. What we have a right to insist on 
is, that no notion or theory shall be allowed to interfere 
with this fundamental maxim, that if any one, by any 
means, leads us to suppose that Christ did not simply 
submit to the will of His Father, and carry it out, but 
sought to move it or change it, he shall be held to have 
departed from the faith once delivered to the saints. 

3. It is confessed by all orthodox schools, that Christ 
was actually the Lord of men, the King of their spirits, 
the Source of all the light which ever visited them, 
the Person for whom all nations longed as their real 
Head and Deliverer, the root of Righteousness in each 
man. The Bible speaks of His being revealed in this 
character ; of the mystery which had been hid from 
ages and generations being made known by His Incar- 
nation. One who appears as the actual representative 
of Humanity, cannot be a formal substitute for it. We 
deny him in the first character, by claiming the second 
for Him. 

4. The Scripture says, Because the children were 



SEASON OF CHEIST'S DEATH. 145 

partakers of flesh and blood He also Himself took 
part of the same. He became subject to death that He 
might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, 
the Devil. Here are reasons assigned for the Incarna- 
tion and the Death of Christ. He shared the sufferings 
of those whose head He is. He overcame death, their 
common enemy, by submitting to it. He delivered 
them from the power of the Devil. All orthodox 
schools, in formal language, — tens of thousands of suf- 
fering people, in ordinary human language — have con- 
fessed the force of the words. Instead of seeking to 
put Christ at a distance from themselves, by tasking 
their fancy to conceive of sufferings which, at the same 
moment, are pronounced inconceivable, they have 
claimed Him as entering- into their actual miseries — as 
bearing their griefs. They have believed that He- 
endured death, because it was theirs, and rose to set 
them free from it, because it was an evil accident 
of their condition, an effect of disorder not of God's 
original order. They have believed that He rescued 
them out of the power of an enemy, by yielding to his 
power — not that He rescued them out of the hand of 
God by paying a penalty to Him. Any notion what- 
ever which interferes in any degree with this faith ; any 
explanation of Christ's sufferings which is put in the 
place of the Apostle's explanation, or does not strictly 
harmonize with it — far more any that contradicts it, and 
leaves us open to the awful danger of confounding the 

L 



146 EEMOVAL OF SIN, SATISFACTION. 

• 

Evil Spirit with God, — we have a right to repudiate as 
unorthodox, unscriptural, and audacious. 

5. The Scripture says, ' The Lamb of God taketh 
away the Sin of the world.' All orthodox teachers 
repeat the lesson.. They say Christ came to deliver sin- 
ners from sin. This is what the sinner asks for. Have 
we a right to call ourselves scriptural or orthodox, if we 
change the words, and put ' penalty of sin ' for ' sin ' ; 
if we suppose that Christ destroyed the connexion be- 
tween sin and death — the one being the necessary wages 
of the other — for the sake of benefiting any individual 
man whatever ? If He had, would He have magnified 
the Law and made it honourable ? Would He not 
have destroyed that which He came to fulfil? Those 
who say the law must execute itself, — it must have its 
penalty — should remember their own words. How does 
it execute itself if a person, against whom it is not 
directed, interposes to bear its punishment ? 

6. The voice at Christ's baptism said, ' This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' Christ said, 
' Therefore doth my Father love Me, because I lay down 
my life for the sheep.' All orthodox schools have said, 
that a perfectly holy and loving Being can be satisfied, 
only with a holiness and love corresponding to His own ; 
that Christ satisfied the Father by presenting the image 
of His own holiness and love, that in His sacrifice and 
death, all that holiness and love came forth completely. 
There is no dissent upon this point, among those 



SUMMARY. 147 

who adhere to the creed. But it cannot be an acci- 
dental point ; it must belong to the root and essence of 
divinity. How, then, can we tolerate for an instant that 
notion of God which would represent Him as satisfied 
by the punishment of sin, not by the purity and 
graciousness of the Son ? 

7. Supposing all these principles gathered together ; 
supposing the Father's will to be a will to all good, the 
Son of God, being one with Him, and Lord of man, to 
obey and fulfil in our flesh that will by entering into 
the lowest condition into which men had fallen through 
their sin ; — supposing this Man to be, for this reason, 
an object of continual complacency to His Father, and 
that complacency to be fully drawn out by the Death 
of the Cross; is not this, in the highest sense, Atone- 
ment? Is not the true, sinless root of Humanity re- 
vealed; is not God in Him reconciled to man? May 
not that reconciliation be proclaimed as a Gospel to all 
men? Is not the Cross the meeting point between 
man and man, between man and God? Is not this 
meeting point what men, in all times and places, have 
been seeking for ? Did any find it till God declared it ? 
And are not we bringing our understandings to the foot. 
of this Cross, when we solemnly abjure all schemes and 
statements, however sanctioned by the arguments of 
divines, however plausible as implements of declamation, 
which prevent us from believing and proclaiming that 
in it all the wisdom and truth, and glory of God were 



148 NO APPEOACH TO UNITARIANISM. 

manifested to the creature ; that in it man is presented 
as a holy and acceptable sacrifice to the Creator? 

' I am not nearer, then, to Unitarians, because I have 
joined them in repudiating certain opinions which they, 
and many of us, have supposed inseparable from the 
doctrine of the Atonement ? ' Not nearer to them, cer- 
tainly, in any one of their negative conclusions. On 
the contrary, I have used the articles in the Creed which 
they most dissent from, as my weapons against the 
representations of God, which we agree in thinking 
horrible. I have appealed to the Creed, as my protec- 
tion from dogmas which I have attributed to the active 
workings of the consciousness and the intellect ; one or 
other of which they are generally inclined to deify. Nor 
can I help further offending them by saying, that the te- 
nacity with which my orthodox brethren have maintained 
notions, at variance, as I think, with their inmost faith, 
has been owing in great measure to their Unitarian 
opponents. They have heard the faith and the opinions 
assailed together ; they have supposed there must be an 
intimate connexion between them ; they have feared to 
ask whether there is or not. Men of the Evangelical 
school, who did not like Archbishop Magee's book, 
because they found nothing in it which responded to 
the witness of their hearts, yet accepted it on the poor 
calculation that it was a learned book, and might defend 
what they were pleased to call the outworks of the faith. 
Men of the Patristic school, who knew how little it 



UNITARIANISM AND UNITARIANS. 149 

accorded with, divinity they most admired, yet argued 
ceconomically, that it might serve the purposes of such an 
age as ours is, and might confute objectors who did not 
deserve to he acquainted with any higher truth. I acknow- 
ledge the dishonesty and faithlessness of both decisions ; 
I feel most deeply the mischiefs which have followed 
from both ; but I see how much there was to make them 
plausible. I believe it is only a peculiar discipline, and 
some very painful experience, which has led me to aban- 
don them, and to say boldly, I must give up Archbishop 
Magee, for I am determined to keep that which makes 
the Atonement precious to my heart and conscience ; to 
keep the theology of the Creeds and the Bible. 

But though I should be dishonest if I pretended that 
I was approximating a step nearer to TJnitarianism, 
because these seemingly impassable barriers are re- 
moved, I do think that they have separated us from 
the hearts and reasons of Unitarians most unnecessarily 
and mischievously. When the Atonement is defended as 
an opinion of ours which they are setting at nought — as a 
conception respecting the method of God's government, 
and the reasons of His conduct, which they are dis- 
puting — the indignation against them becomes greater, 
because the question at issue becomes more involved 
with our personal credit, ingenuity, security. 

We are on one side, they are on the other ; the 
sense that the divine Atonement is infinitely wonderful, 
mixes with a consciousness that we are making it petty 



150 EFFECT OF BELIEVING THE ATONEMENT. 

by our mode of fighting for it. We revenge ourselves for 
the painful contradiction by increased violence, hoping 
so to convince ourselves that we are in earnest. When 
the Atonement is contemplated as the ground of a 
Gospel to men, — when I dare to say, God so loved the 
world as to give His only-begotten Son for it — how 
closely does that belief bind me to Unitarians, of every 
class and hue ! They may build their theology upon 
certain deductions of the intellect, or upon certain indi- 
vidual consciousnesses ; mine rests on the Eternal Love, 
which overlooks all distinctions, which embraces the 
universe. They may glorify this or that material — this 
or that spiritual — notion and conception. I am bound 
to acknowledge a Son of God, who is the Lord of their 
spirits and souls and bodies as He is of mine, who took 
their nature as He did mine, who died upon the cross 
for them as He did for me. They may argue about the 
degree of sin in one or another of us ; I am bound to 
think that I am as much a sinner as any of them can 
be, and that Christ is the Lamb of God who took away 
the sin of the world. They may think there is some 
other way to the Father than through the cross of the 
Son ; I must confess that there, He is as willing to meet 
and bless every one of them, as He can be to meet and 
bless me. I can only hope to know Him while I seek 
Him in One who perfectly humbled himself; what a 
lie and a blasphemy to exalt myself on the plea of 
possessing that knowledge ! 



ESSAY VIII. 

THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD FROM DEATH, 
THE GRAVE, AND HELL. 

In the last Essay I spoke of the Death of Christ, 
as it is connected with the Christian idea of Sacrifice 
and Atonement. But all people who know the tenden- 
cies of this age, and who know themselves, are aware 
how much more easy it is to contemplate this or any 
event recorded in -the Scripture, as an idea, than as 
a fact. There are many who acknowledge the Death 
and Kesurrection of Christ, in what they call a spiritual 
sense, to whom the plain words of the Creed, ' He was 
dead and buried, He descended into Hell, the third day 
He rose again from the dead,' are merely words which 
they repeat because they have repeated them from child- 
hood. Numbers more hold those words to be the relics 
of an effete superstition, out of which the world has ex- 
tracted whatever good there ever was in it, and which 
may now be left to crumble. I wish to inquire whether 
the spiritual men, or these words of the Creed, meet the 
demands of the human heart best ; whether these words, 



152 THE LAST ENEMY. 

or those who cast them aside, are most favourers of 
superstition. 

1. St. Paul says: ' The last enemy which shall be 
destroyed is Death.'' Strauss, being at issue with him 
on most other points, appears to have reached the climax 
of opposition upon this. He says : ' The last enemy 
which shall be destroyed is the belief of man in his own 
immortality.' Some may suppose that he has merely 
uttered an audacious paradox, for the sake of startling 
us, and showing us how far his vehemence against our 
ordinary faith will go. I do not think so. If we ques- 
tion our own minds honestly, we may find that there have 
been many hours, days, weeks, perhaps years, in which 
we have practically yielded assent to his proposition. 
' If I could get rid of this sense of immortality — if I 
' could convince myself that my years would be rounded 
1 with a sleep — if I could be sure that there would be no 
1 dreams in that sleep — what freedom I should enjoy ! 
' how I should be able to enjoy the threescore years, 
1 or the thirty or twenty years, which are allotted me 
' here ! ' Surely the modern teacher has a large body of 
unconfessing, unconscious disciples ; he must have known 
that he was the spokesman for thousands, whom some 
fear withheld from expressing their own feelings. And 
have I not been obliged to confess in former essays, that 
there is a justification for these feelings ? Cannot num- 
bers tell of sad effects which the dread of the world to 
come has produced upon their conduct to other men, 



DEE AD OF IMMORTALITY. 153 

upon their judgment of the beautiful world in which 
God has placed them, upon their thoughts of God Him- 
self? Have they not been cold, hard, selfish, whenever 
their minds have been occupied with the one problem, 
how they may avert the doom which they fear is await- 
ing them hereafter ? Have they not almost cursed the 
trees and flowers, the new birth of spring, the songs of 
birds, the faces of children, as if they were mockeries — 
witnesses of some present life with which they cannot 
safely sympathise? Has not the vision of God been one 
of darkness and horror? When they have said, ' Our 
Father, ' have they not intended one who might destroy 
them, and from whom they have wished to be delivered? 
Such experiences in themselves, interpret what they 
read in history. They see what frightful crimes have 
been committed by men for the sake of pleasing or ap- 
peasing those who may dispose of their future destiny ; 
how these crimes have become a part of their moral 
system, sanctioned and promoted by those who had ap- 
parently more insight into the mind of their God or 
gods than they have ; what poverty and filth, what 
neglect of relations, what slavery and cowardice have 
been engendered by the notion that the business of 
existence here, is to provide for the possibilities of 
another. 

Tantum Relligio potuit suadere malorum 

has been no unreasonable summary of this evidence. I 



154 CAN WE ESCAPE- FROM IT ? 

not this summary expressed in another form by the 
words : l The enemy to be got rid of, is the sense of 
immortality ? ' 

But practical men are driven to ask themselves another 
question. ' How is this sense to be got rid of? How is 
this enemy to be destroyed? No experiments for the 
purpose have succeeded yet ; no theories of the universe, 
no new arrangements of it. When you have seemingly 
extinguished this consciousness, it starts up again ; the 
arguments and schemes which were to exclude it, them- 
selves suggest it and awaken it. And yet there have 
been such approximations to the extinction of this feel- 
ing, as show clearly the only way in which it ever can 
be reached. Each one may understand for himself that 
the more he cultivates a mere animal existence, the 
more he forgets that he was created for anything but to 
eat and drink and sleep, the less clear and strong is 
this sense of immortality. And if he could stifle all 
thoughts that carry him back into past generations, and 
onward into those which will be when he has left the 
earth ; if he could lose all interest whatever in one and 
the other ; if he could disconnect himself altogether with 
family, race, country, social sympathies ; if he could cease 
to think of himself as a person, and become merely a 
thing, he might quit himself of this coil ; not, I suspect, 
till then. As long as everything about him preaches of 
permanence and restoration, as well as of fragility and 
decay ; as long as he is obliged to speak of succession 



CAN IT BECOME MEEELY POLITICAL ? 155 

and continuance and order in the universe, and in the 
societies of men ; as long as he feels that he can inves- 
tigate the one, and that he is a living portion of the 
other ; so long the sense of immortality will be with 
him ; he cannot cast it off. The philosopher to whom 
I have alluded, probably supposes that he can substi- 
tute a political immortality for a personal one ; that he 
can teach men to be indifferent about their own con- 
tinuance after death, by making them think of the 
life and endurance of their race. He will find that 
the more strongly one sentiment is developed, the 
more certain the other is to come forth; that if one 
perishes, the other must perish. For he who really, 
heartily, believes himself to be the member of a family 
or society, for which it is worth while to fight, and 
to perish, has the strongest conviction of his own per- 
sonality — he cannot separate his life from its life ; if it 
has any being, he must. 

But on the other hand, it is most true that a man may 
become awfully conscious of his own personality, while 
he is standing apart from all human beings. This is what 
I spoke of, in a former essay, as emphatically the sense of 
Sin, the experience of a dark, hopeless isolation, caused 
by one's own self, certain to continue while that continues. 
And this it is which unites Sin to Death, which makes 
it so hard for us to divorce them in our thoughts. Death, 
in the obvious aspect of it, is isolation ; the separation 
of each creature from its fellow. The internal dread 



156 THE SOLITUDE OF DEATH. 

of it, strictly corresponds to this its outward manifes- 
tation. ' I said, in the cutting off of my days, I shall go 
to the gates of the grave; I am deprived of the residue 
of my days. I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, 
in the land of the living. I shall behold man no more 
with the inhabitants of the world.' This was Heze- 
kiah's language ; the most natural language that a man 
could utter ; the revelation of the thoughts of innume- 
rable hearts. He has in himself the sense of immortality. 
It has been nourished by all his faithful acts as a King, 
by all his sympathies with his nation, by all his efforts 
to preserve it alive, by all his confidence that God would 
uphold it from generation to generation. Now he is 
losing sight of all those with whom he has shared his 
hopes, his fears, his sorrows. He is losing sight of the 
temple of God, of all that has reminded him of His 
presence. Where shall he be ? shall he not be alone ? 
A living creature, but an exile from living creatures. 
No longer in an order ; perhaps in a chaos. Oh ! infi- 
nite horror ; the horror of absolute solitude ! what can be 
compared with it ? 

The German philosopher, then, has much to say for 
himself; but I think St. Paul has more. The sense of 
immortality is very dreadful, but the terror is not one 
which the thought of death relieves us of; the thought 
of death awakens it in us — the nearer we come to death, 
the nearer it faces us. Death, then, is the enemy ; we 
must grapple with that if we would overcome the other. 



MEN DO NOT SUBMIT TO DEATH. 157 

And men do grapple with it. There is a deep convic- 
tion in their minds, that death is utterly monstrous, 
anomalous ; something to which they cannot, and should 
not, submit. Generations of moralists have done nothing 
whatever to enforce the experience of six thousand 
years. They go on denouncing the folly of men for 
thinking that death is not a necessity, for not yielding to 
the necessity ; the heart of man does not heed their dis- 
courses ; their own hearts do not heed them. There is 
that in them which rebels against death, which rebels 
against it all the more because it is a necessity. Till 
you explain what that is, — till you justify it, you will 
not cure it. You may wonder why men are so un- 
reasonable, why they dread death, hate it, defy it, and 
then again seem to long for it, to suppose that it is 
the only end of their struggle of pain and doubt and 
despair, but you will fall into the same unreasonable- 
ness yourselves, you will repeat all these inconsistencies 
as soon as you pass from the professor's chair to the 
couch of actual suffering. 

I cannot see that the belief in Christ's death would 
be any deliverance from these awful perplexities, if that 
death were an artificial arrangement for saving us from 
a future penalty, while the actual penalty which makes 
us tremble is incurred as much as ever. But it is not 
in that light that the Cross ever presented itself to a 
weary, heavy laden man. He hears that there is One 
who has shared his death and the death of the whole 



158 COMMUNITY IN DEATH. 

world ; One in whom God delighted ; One in whom each 
man may delight. If this news is believed, the sepa- 
ration of death, that which is indeed its sting, is taken 
away. It is now, for the first time, common to the 
individual man with his race. He shall not die alone. 
He shall not cease to see the Lord, even the Lord in the 
land of the living ; no, nor man with the inhabitants of 
the world. A new and mysterious attraction holds him 
to both. Death becomes a bond to them. And it is no 
longer a mere necessity. Christ chose it because it is 
ours. We can choose it as His, more than ours. What 
I am saying, has no direct reference to our belief in the 
issue of the death. That may be always implicitly 
contained in our belief of the death itself. We should 
not be satisfied with it if we did not see in it the pledge 
of triumph. But Jesus Christ, as the Crucified, has 
been an object of rest and comfort to multitudes who 
have not consciously dwelt on His resurrection. The 
fact is undoubted, and we do not rightly understand 
ourselves or our fellow-creatures if we overlook it. 

2. Nor are we accurate observers of facts, if we 
roughly confound the feelings of men respecting death, 
with those which are awakened by the grave. Philo- 
sophers or divines may classify them together, — for 
actual men they are different. ' He is gone,' are the 
words by which those who are standing by a bed-side, 
declare that the person whom they knew, is not in the 
form which they look upon. But that form is sacred, 



EARTH TO EAETH. 159 

and awful. It is the witness and pledge that he has 
been. They cannot look at it in its stillness and repose, 
and satisfy themselves with any thoughts of a disem- 
bodied spirit. In some way or other, they must connect 
it with the friend who spoke with them, and cared for 
them. And yet the instinct, ' bury the dead out of our 
sight,' is also deep and healthy; there is something 
essentially brutal in those people who, like the Tartars, 
can bear to leave corpses exposed. We call that which 
the earth encloses, that which it devours and assimilates 
to itself, ' remains ; ' or, ' that which is mortal ; ' we 
have a horror of identifying it with the actual body 
which was so precious to us. We shrink from the 
mummy as from a weak, irreverent, materialistic experi- 
ment to preserve that which was meant to perish, and 
could not but perish. The earth or ashes seem to us 
far better; we would rather cast the dearest form into 
the sea, than give it that horrible, unnatural kind of 
endurance. These are true feelings, which are found 
strongest in the truest minds ; yet they are very 
inexplicable. The body associates itself with any 
thoughts we have of personality and immortality ; that 
which lies in the earth, or is consumed with the fire, we 
naturally and inevitably associate with decay, putrefac- 
tion, destruction. It is easy for superstition to confound 
the feelings, and to invest relics with the sacredness 
which we must attach to body ; none of its appeals to 
the heart have been so successful. But the conscience 



160 THE ABYSS OF SPACE. 

bears witness against the confusion, and longs for a 
deliverance from it. ' He was buried.' He, the King 
of men, the true Man, the Son of the Highest, has been 
in the grave. He knows its secrets, not as a stranger, 
but as an inhabitant. I believe myriads of sorrowers 
have found comfort in that conviction, which all their 
speculations could not give them, but rather took away. 
His burial, they feel, ought to explain that which all 
others cannot explain. And they do get the explanation 
into their hearts, though their understandings may still 
be much bewildered. 

3. But besides and beyond this narrow house, there 
are fields of speculation, in which men have lost them- 
selves almost from the beginning of the earth until now. 
Lord Byron has brought Cain into the Abyss of Space, 
Lucifer being his guide thither. No conception can be 
truer. The first murderer must have traversed those 
regions ; innumerable footsteps have followed his, all 
perhaps under the same conduct. A dark, formless 
world, in which there is nothing for the eye to dwell 
upon, for the heart to embrace, where all is vague 
and monstrous, — this may become, this has become, the 
habitation of human intellects, formed in God's image. 
We can come into such utter dreariness, because we 
are spirits, because we have a home and a Father, 
because we can have no rest till we find that home 
and that Father. If we were merely children of 
earth, we might be satisfied with its pictures and 



MEANING OF HADES. 161 

images ; these would be all in all to us. Being better 
than this, we must make a hell for ourselves, if we 
cannot find a heaven. Yes, a hell ! the simple language 
is the best. I will not quarrel about the etymology of 
Hades. It may mean the unseen, or the formless. But 
the unseen becomes to the bewildered conscience the 
formless ; the negation of a world, the darkest conception 
a man can have of that which is without himself. He 
brings into it a more terrible darkness, that which is 
within himself; the worm of conscience which lie 
cannot kill, the fire he can never quench. To be de- 
livered from that, is to be delivered from sin. But how 
may he be delivered from the imagination to which sin 
has imparted its own horror and confusion? What 
glimpse of daylight can he discern in the trackless 
abyss ? ' He descended into Hell.' Mighty words ! 
which I do not pretend that I can penetrate, or reduce 
under any forms of the intellect. If I could, I think 
they would be of little worth to me. But I accept 
them as news that there is no comer of God's universe 
over which His love has not brooded — none over which 
the Son of God and the Son of Man has not asserted 
His dominion. I claim a right to tell this news to 
every peasant and beggar of the land. I may bid him 
rejoice, and give thanks, and sing merry songs to the 
God who made him, because there is nothing created 
which his Lord and Master has not redeemed, of which 
He is not the King ; I may bid him fear nothing around 

M 



162 THE KESURRECTTON. 

him or "beneath him while he trusts in Him. I may 
beseech him to watch continually, lest he should lose 
his confidence in the divine and human Saviour and 
Conqueror, or forget that He has saved and conquered 
for His brethren as well as himself. I may tell him 
that if he does, he will become again the self-seeking, 
self-worshipping, cowardly creature the Devil is always 
seeking to make him, and that then he will assuredly 
fall into a condition of utter falsehood, in which all real 
things will seem to him unreal, and all unreal real ; in 
which the worm and the fire of conscience will become 
even more and more intolerable. 

4. The G-ospel narratives of the Kesurrection are only 
a little longer and more minute than those which record 
the fact of Christ's burial. The women go to the 
sepulchre, they find the stone rolled away, angels ask 
them why they seek the living among the dead. He is 
not there, He is risen. They tell Simon Peter. He 
and John go to the sepulchre. One stays without, one 
looks at the linen cloth and the napkin. They tell it to 
the rest. There is wonder and doubt. — This is the 
story. What ! only this ? no greater array of proofs to 
secure our assent for that which stands solitary in the 
history of the world? No more overpowering testi- 
monies than that of these women and these fishermen, in 
support of an event which is to be the basis of a world- 
belief ? No ! — meditate the fact well — this is all. Dili- 
gent men, in later times, may have shown, with great 



OLD EVIDENCE OF IT. 163 

skill, why these fishermen and women were entitled to 
credit ; why their simplicity and their own doubts con- 
firm their trustworthiness ; what they endured for their 
perseverance in their story, &c. Those to whom the 
word of the Resurrection first came, received it simply 
as a message which, through whatever feeble voices it 
might reach them, must have been sent them from a 
Father in Heaven, because no one else knew how much 
they wanted it. If they had a Father, if He wished 
them to know that they had, this, they felt, must be 
His way of telling them. Between them and God there 
had been a dark impassable gulf; if that were not in 
some way filled up, they might talk of Him, use His 
name in their petitions, dream that He meant them well, 
but nothing had actually been done for them ; no one 
hope of their hearts had been satisfied, no dread had 
been taken away. If there was no person who was 
actually one with God and one with man, the gulf 
must remain for ever unfilled ; if there was, it was not 
incredible that He had entered into man's death, grave, 
Hell; it was absolutely incredible that He should be 
holden of them. Everything such a Being did, must 
be actual, not fictitious ; seeming could have no relation 
to His nature ; what men knew of suffering and fear He 
must have known. But to suppose that His Father 
forgot Him, did not own Him, did not claim Him, be- 
cause He was exhibiting the fulness of His love, and 
carrying out His purposes would have been a shock to 



164 NEW EVIDENCE 

the heart and reason such as they had never been called 
to undergo yet. Here was the evidence for the Resur- 
rection; with this did the preachers of it subdue the 
world. 

And this, I believe, must and will be the evidence of 
it in all generations to come, as much as it was in the 
first. The testimony will be mighty, because the thing 
testified of is that which all men, everywhere, are want- 
ing, — which some who do not crave for what is pecu- 
liar and distinguishing, who must have that which is 
human, are taught by many hard processes that they 
want. But though I hold this evidence to be the 
highest, and to be that which all other kinds of it only 
serve to corroborate, I am convinced that the expe- 
rience of eighteen centuries, our experience especially of 
the confusions and contradictions into which churchmen 
and church doctors have fallen respecting the state of 
men here and hereafter, the experience that is appealed 
to as conclusive against our Creed, illustrates the words 
I have been speaking of in this Essay, as they could 
not have been illustrated in the first ages. 

1. We speak continually of death as the separation 
of the soul from the body. If we try to give ourselves 
an account of what we mean by Soul and Body, we 
should say, I suppose, roughly, that the soul is that 
with which we think ; the body that which moves from 
place to place, and to which certain organs of sense 
belong. If this be so, how little does our language 



SOUL AND BODY. 165 

correspond to the fact which it tries to describe ! Death, 
so far as we can judge from any of the phenomena it 
presents to us, affects the powers of thinking, of motion, 
of sensation, equally ; our natural impression would be, 
that whatever influence it produces on one, it produces 
also on the other. But that strange ' sense of immor- 
tality' which the benevolent German is so eager to 
extinguish, would not allow people to follow this con- 
clusion of nature; something, they said, must survive. 
The soul would go to Hades ; the hero himself would be 
a prey to the birds and dogs. We have adopted the 
language very nearly; often we adopt it altogether, 
even though we have a confused impression that the 
soul has more to do with the hero himself, and the body 
with that which the dogs or birds devour. But when 
that conviction has thoroughly taken possession of a 
man, when his ' sense of immortality' has begun to 
express itself in the only language which can express 
it, and he says, ' I shall survive, i" cannot perish ! ' then, 
first, all that horror which Strauss would deliver us from 
is awakened; then, secondly, it becomes impossible for 
the man to divide his soul from that which has been, 
during all his experience of it, its yoke-fellow. If he 
has cultivated his powers of reflection, and has studied 
the forms of language, he may learn gradually to find 
that the names which have stood so distinct in men's 
discourses, have distinct realities answering to them. But 
he will not allow his imperfect psychology to interfere 



166 Christ's soul poured out to death. 

with the witness of his conscience — that he, who uses 
equally the powers of thought and the powers of motion 
and sensation which have been entrusted to him, is 
responsible for both ; — that, however they may be 
divided or united, they are both intimately attached to 
his personality. 

If, then, there comes upon him a much stronger sense 
of his connexion with deeds done in the body than he 
had while he was drawing those artificial lines, and also 
a much stronger conviction of the dignity and sacred- 
ness of the body than those who would separate it from 
the soul can entertain, the marvel of death — which seems 
to extinguish soul as well as body, and yet which he 
can neither hope nor fear will extinguish Mm — presents 
itself under a new aspect. He must have a solution of 
it. The solution must be one which does not hide any 
part of the fact, which does not impose a notion upon 
him as a substitute for the fact. The Scripture says 
plainly, that Christ poured out His soul, as well as His 
body, to death. The description of His agony and cru- 
cifixion has been received by those who have believed it, 
practically, if not in name, as the history of the death of 
a soul as well as of a body. Those who have wished to 
represent His death as different from all others, for the 
sake of enhancing its worth, have dwelt upon this as its 
most wonderful characteristic. To me it seems the 
most wonderful, because from it I am able to learn what 
other deaths are, — what the death of man is. Christ 



EELICS. 167 

gave up all that was His own, — He gave* Himself to 
His Father. He disclaimed any life which did not 
belong to Him in virtue of His union with the Eternal 
God. It is our privilege to disclaim any life which 
does not belong to us in virtue of our union with Him. 
This would be an obvious truth, if we were indeed 
created and constituted in Him, — if He was the root of 
our humanity. We should not then have any occasion 
to ask how much perishes or survives in the hour of 
death. We should assume that all must perish, to the 
end that all may survive. 

2. Such a conclusion would go far, I think, to help 
us through that terrible perplexity, into which I said we 
all fell, respecting the body and that which we commit 
to the ground. As long as we suppose the mystery of 
death to be the division of soul and body, so long we 
must cling, with a deep love, to those remains which 
yet we are forced to regard with a kind of loathing. 
We shall be ready to believe stories of miracles wrought 
by them, we shall be half inclined to worship them. 
Or if we reject this temptation — because Romanists have 
fallen into it, and we think it must therefore be shunned — 
we shall take our own Protestant way of asserting the 
sanctity of relics, by maintaining that at a certain day 
they will all be gathered together, and that the very 
body to which they once belonged will be re-constructed 
out of them. That immense demand is made upon our 
faith — a demand in comparison of which all notions of 



168 CORRUPTION INHERITING INCORRUPTION. 

cures wrought at tombs fade into nothing — by divines 
who would yet shrink . instinctively from saying that 
what they call a living body here, is composed of a mere 
congeries of particles, — who would denounce any man as 
a materialist if he did say that. The demand is made 
upon us by divines, who use as a text-book of Chris- 
tian evidences Butler's Analogy, the ground chapter of 
which, On the Future State, is based on the argument 
that there is no proof that death destroys any of our 
living powers, — those of the body more than those of the 
soul; — and which distinctly calls our attention to the 
fact, that ordinary attrition may destroy the particles of 
which the matter of our bodies consists, more than once 
in the course of a life ; so that nothing can be inferred 
from our depositing the whole of that matter at the 
moment of dissolution. This demand is made upon 
our faith by divines, who read to every mourner who 
goes with them to the grave of a friend, that corruption 
cannot inherit incorruption ; that flesh and blood cannot 
inherit the kingdom of God. 

But though I speak of this opinion as ' a demand 
upon our faith,' I hold it to be the fruit of our unbelief. 
If we did attach any meaning to that expression upon 
which St. Peter at Jerusalem, St. Paul at Antioch, 
dwelt so earnestly, that Christ's body saw no corrup- 
tion ; — if we did believe that He who was without sin 
showed forth to us in Himself what is the true normal 
condition of humanity, and showed forth in that body 



IDENTITY OF THE BODY. 169 

of His what the human body is, we should not dare, 
I think, any longer to make the corrupt, degrading, 
shameful accidents which necessarily belong to that 
body in each one of us, because we have sinned, 
the rule by which we judge of it here: how much 
less should we suppose these to be the elements out of 
which its high, and restored, and spiritual estate can 
ever be fashioned ? 

It is impossible not to perceive, under this notion of 
a resurrection of relics — of that corruption which our 
Lord did not see — a very deep conviction that the body 
of our humiliation must be identical with the body re- 
deemed and renewed. This conviction is so rooted in the 
heart, that it will absolutely force nature, fact, Scripture, 
everything, into accordance with it. I must be, in all 
respects, the same person that I was before I put off my 
tabernacle; therefore these elements, which were once 
attached to my body, must come from all ends of the 
earth to constitute it. What a witness for the reality 
of a belief, that it can sustain such a contradiction as 
this rather than cease to exist ! All through my life on 
earth, soul and body are groaning together under a 
weight of decay and mortality — are crying for deliver- 
ance from it. An hour comes which seems to say that 
their emancipation has taken place ; that these Adam 
conditions belong no more to the man ; that as to them 
he is utterly dead. The preacher of God's Gospel 
runs about saying, ' Oh, no ! it is a mistake ! ' These 



170 DEATH IN ADAM, LIFE IN CHEIST. 

witnesses of the fall — these pledges of pain and shame, 
from which fever, consumption, cholera, after days or 
years of suffering have at last set you free — "belong to 
you inseparably, necessarily, eternally. They are that 
body, the most curious, wonderful, glorious of God's 
works ; they are not, as your consciences tell you, as the 
Scripture tells you, the proofs that this wonderful fabric 
has suffered a monstrous and cruel outrage; that it 
needs a deliverer to raise it and renew it. A strange 
Gospel, one would think! And yet one which men 
actually receive, which they will continue to receive 
and hold, rather than think that they are to perish, or 
that they are to have merely a visionary soul-life. 

' As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made 
alive.' This is St. Paul's broad statement in that 
passage of his writings which deals specially and for- 
mally with this subject. It is in strict accordance with 
all his other doctrine. Christ is the Lord of Man, the 
Life-giver of Man, the True Man ; Adam is the root of 
his individuality, of his disease, of his death. All is 
strictly in order. Death has its accomplishment: the 
Adam dies, and is buried, and sees corruption ; Christ 
gives Himself to death, and sees no corruption. If a 
man has an Adam nature, and is also related by a 
higher and closer affinity to Christ, is the effect of that 
union that he shall be redeemed, body and soul, out of 
the corruption which is deposited in the grave, or that it 
shall be his future, as it has been his past, inheritance ? 



THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE. 171 

But lias not St. Paul spoken of a change to take 
place in a twinkling of an eye? and has lie not con- 
nected this with the last trump ? I hope, at some other 
time, to examine the whole of this great key chapter, 
and to see what it actually reveals to us. But I cannot 
refuse even here to meet this especial objection, it is for 
many reasons so practically important. 

If, then, there was no allusion to that last trump of the 
Archangel in this sentence, I do not think we should any 
of us have hesitated to believe that St. Paul, in strict 
conformity with all his teaching respecting our death in 
Adam, and our life in Christ, was showing the mystery 
— so deep, so necessary to all, so contrary to all the 
notions of the Corinthians — that men, instead of sleep- 
ing in their graves, would be changed in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye. And I believe no one could 
have hesitated in any particular case to have applied 
the words. Nay, I do not find that men hesitate, even 
with their customary notions and opinions, to apply 
them now. As they watch the last breath departing 
from a dear friend, they seize the language, they feel 
they have a right to it. They say, ' A moment ago he 
was mortal, and now he is free ! It has been but the 
twinkling of an eye, and what a change has come ! ' 
Such are the unconscious utterances of men's faith and 
hope, grounded, as they surely think, and, as I am 
convinced they have a right to think, on St. Paul's 
words. 



172 THE LAST TRUMP. 

Nor does the thought then disturb them, that there is 
a want of identity between him that has been and him 
that is. Though the decaying, agonized frame is lying 
calm and at rest, they do not then doubt that he who 
spoke to them a few moments before, did not derive his 
powers of speech, any more than the celestial smile 
which still remains in the clay, from that clay. Faith 
and reason, however crushed and confounded, are too 
strong, in that hour of reality, for a notion so cold and 
so inhuman. 

But the trump of the Archangel ! that seems to put all 
belief of a resurrection of the body to an inconceivable 
distance, and to make the hypothesis, which identifies it 
with a resurrection of remains, after all the only scrip- 
tural one. And this opinion becomes so intertwined with 
the expectation of a great future judgment, of the just 
and the unjust, and therefore with all the most sacred 
moral principles, that we may well tremble when we 
encounter it. If I did not feel that morality, and godli- 
ness, and the practical belief of a judgment, were put 
into the greatest risk by the confusions which we are 
tolerating respecting these words, I would gladly pass 
them by. But I dare not be silent, because I see what a 
mass of unbelief and indifference is congealing in men's 
minds under a thin coating of apparent orthodoxy. 

I scarcely need ask any Protestant whether the words 
' trump of the Archangel ' convey to him precisely the 
impression which he would derive from the picture of 



PICTUEES. 173 

Michael Angelo. He is likely to answer with, what I 
should think, rather excessive and unnecessary indig- 
nation, that none of his impressions are derived from 
pictures ; that he has the greatest horror of their sensu- 
alizing effect ; that of course he does not dream of a mate- 
rial trumpet. I do not use this language myself. I have 
learnt from pictures, and am willing to learn from them. 
I believe I might learn much from this one of Michael 
Augelo's, which would do me great good, which would 
give strength, distinctness, even depth to my own con- 
victions, and to the words of inspiration. But I accept 
the statement, from which I am sure no pious and in- 
telligent Bomanist would for an instant dissent, that the 
mere trumpet, whether read of in a book, or seen in a pic- 
ture, though it may be helpful to the mind in delivering 
it from vagueness, is symbolical ; that to give it an actual 
material counterpart, would be gross and superstitious 
in the last and lowest degree. 

I should scarcely think it necessary to make this re- 
mark, if I did not perceive painful proofs that our zeal 
— to a great extent, I think, an honest zeal — against 
symbolism, sometimes involves us in a confusion, to 
which those who are educated in it (being thereby, I 
allow, exposed to other temptations,) are not equally 
subject. We adopt what we suppose is a spiritual sub- 
stitute for some literal or material representation. We 
find we have got only a shadow or phantom. We must 
fill up the hollow in our hearts by some means ; and we 



174 MEANING OF THE TRUMPET. 

unconsciously add on the very driest and most material 
conception, to the (so called) spiritual one. as a necessary 
support to its feebleness. I could give instances upon 
instances of this strange intellectual hocus-pocus; the 
neglect of them by divines is, I believe, contributing 
most effectually to the return of Romanist notions and 
habits. I do not therefore think it unnecessary to bring 
each person who speaks of the Archangel's trumpet dis- 
tinctly to book, and to make him confess, though he may 
be disposed to shrink from the acknowledgment as too 
obvious and humiliating — that he does not mean such 
a trumpet as men play upon ; that he would count it 
shockingly irreverent to let the thoughts of such an 
instrument dwell in his mind in connexion with such 
a subject. 

But are we, then, to dismiss the phrase as if it im- 
ported nothing to us, because we cannot reduce it to 
this signification, which would be actually nothing ? I 
apprehend that it has the most serious import, and that 
the Scriptures tell us what it is. The Prophets of the 
Old Testament, in whose ears the trumpet that sounded 
loud and long on Sinai was ever repeating its notes, 
did not allow their countrymen to rest in the old image. 
Every rending of the mountains, every earthquake, 
everything which idolaters looked upon as the sign of 
the wrath of the tyrant before whom they trembled, 
everything that the mere philosopher calls an ordinary 
convulsion of nature, was with them an Archangel's 



THE OLD PKOPHETS ; ST. PAUL. 175 

trumpet, declaring that the righteous and everlasting 
King was coming forth to punish the earth for its iniqui- 
ties, and to set truth and judgment in the midst of it. 
This was the teaching — the uniform teaching — of the 
old seers, in whose school St. Paul's mind was formed. 
Are we to suppose that he had a less comprehensive, 
less spiritual idea of the divine method than they had, — 
that he deserted them for some more heathenish con- 
ception? Are we not rather to conclude that he was 
carrying out their truth to its highest power ; that what- 
ever they meant he meant still more perfectly ? 

If you ask whether he meant that there would sound 
in his own day an Archangel's trumpet, which would call 
the nations — his own first — into God's judgment, and 
that a mighty change in the condition of them all, the 
beginning of what may be rightly called a new world, 
would follow upon that judgment, I should answer, ' Un- 
doubtedly I think so ; I can put no other construction 
upon his language ; and I can put no other construction 
upon the facts of history, except that they fulfilled his 
language.' But if you ask further how he connected 
this with the condition of each individual man, who 
might or might not be alive at that crisis in the world's 
history, I should say, ' Since he held that in Adam all 
die, and that in Christ all are made alive, he of necessity 
believed also that a day was at hand for every man, a 
day of revelation and discovery, a day which should 
show him what life was, and what death was ; what his 



176 THE GENEEAL AND PARTICULAR JUDGMENT. 

own true condition, what his false condition was. And 
everything which warned a man that such a day was at 
hand, which roused him to seek for light, and to fly 
from darkness, was a note of the Archangel's trumpet ; 
a voice bidding him awake, that Christ the Lord of his 
spirit might give him light. And in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye, by a fit of apoplexy, by the 
dagger of an assassin, the vesture of mortality which 
hides that light from it, might drop off from him, and 
he might be changed. What had merely sounded to 
him here as some common earthly note of preparation 
for death, would then be recognised as the Archangel's 
trumpet calling him to account, asking him whether the 
light that had been vouchsafed to him, whilst shadows 
of darkness were still about him, had been faithfully 
used, or whether he had loved darkness rather than 
light, because his deeds were evil ? 

In both these anticipations, — if they are, or can be 
separated, — I accept St. Paul and the other Scriptures 
as a guide respecting the condition of us who are living 
in this later period of the world. I look for a judgment of 
Nations and Churches to wind up our age, as he looked 
for one to wind up his age. I believe the trumpet of 
the Archangel has been sounding in every century of 
the modern world — that it is sounding now, and will 
sound more clearly before the end comes. But I do 
not, for this, allow myself to doubt that it is sounding 
in the ears of each individual man ; that a time will 



DISCOUESES OF PEEACHEES. 177 

come, when the light will burst in upon him, and show 
him things as they are ; when he will know that there 
is all life for him in Christ, and that there is all death in 
himself. I cannot persuade myself that the eloquent 
words I have heard from preachers, in which this truth 
was pressed home upon the consciences of men, in which 
they were told how all personal and family visitations 
were messages from heaven, trumpets of the Archangel 
calling them to repentance, were merely fine metaphors 
which, if possible, were to produce a startling effect, but 
which meant nothing. It is indeed ' fiddling while 
Rome is burning,' for God's ambassadors to be in- 
dulging in fine talk about His judgment, which their 
congregations are not to take as real. I must sup- 
pose that they think such language not metaphorical, 
but the translation of metaphors into facts. And if 
so, there is nothing in this part of the teaching of 
St. Paul, to hinder us from accepting the other part as 
a confirmation, not a contradiction, of the inference 
which we should draw from the New Testament gene- 
rally, — that Christ was buried in order that the body 
might be claimed as an heir of life ; as redeemed from 
corruption. 

3. Supposing this to be the doctrine which is involved 
in the belief of Christ's descent into the grave, another 
enormous weight would be taken from the human spirit 
— a weight which the heart and the understanding have 
been equally unable to bear. We are told to believe 

N 



178 DISEMBODIED SPIRITS. 

in a place of disembodied spirits. According to all the 
maxims which we ordinarily recognise, place appertains 
to "body ; it is only of body that you can predicate it. 
And this logical principle, so far from being at variance 
with our higher instincts, entirely accords with them. 
People talk of their friends as disembodied. When 
they think of them, they are obliged to suppose them 
clothed with bodies. They admit the necessity; it 
is part, they say, of their weakness. They ought to 
feel otherwise. They ought to compel themselves to 
imagine that which they cannot imagine; that which 
they do only imagine at the peril of a direct contradic- 
tion ! ' But Scripture demands it.' How, and where ? 
It speaks of the bodies of saints coming forth, and 
showing themselves after the Resurrection. It speaks of 
Moses and Elias appearing to the disciples. It records 
acts of our Lord on earth, by which bodies are recalled 
from the unseen region into ours. * Oh ! but these are 
exceptions.' Exactly; and Scripture presents nothing 
but exceptions to your theory. If, however, I accept 
the Scriptures as teaching me laws by instances, and so 
correcting my theories, and dispossessing me of them, 
I think I am at least as much bowing my neck to its 
authority as you are, even though the result may be 
that I am not obliged to force my conscience or my 
intellect into an impossible position. 

' But are we not, then, to believe in a Hades ? ' It 
was not a duty, but a terrible necessity, which led men 



THE GENTILE AND JEWISH HADES. 179 

of the old world to speak of Hades. They did not 
believe in it ; there was nothing to believe. The gulf 
beyond the grave had never been entered ; they could 
do nothing but mark it down in their charts by some 
name which left an impression of its vague, inaccessible 
character. But the heart was so impatient of the void, 
that all earthly forms and pictures must be thrown into 
it, if, perhaps, it might be filled. It cannot be all 
Stygian darkness ; there may be verdant meadows here 
and there, scattered in the midst of the desolation ; the 
forms of human justice must be there ; iEacus and Eha- 
damanthus will decide which of the shadows that pass 
by them shall be consigned to the better, which to the 
more hateful, region. The Jew, taught in the law of his 
fathers, dared not let his fancy indulge in such crea- 
tions. There was no Elysium in his Hades. He fled 
from the frightful vision of mere death and darkness, 
to trust in the living God. The dead he was sure 
could not praise Him : if God had been his hope and 
deliverer all through his pilgrimage, He would not 
desert him at last. He would not leave his soul in 
Hades, nor suffer that which had been holy in His eyes 
to see corruption. Yet the fact of corruption was before 
his eyes ; the grave did receive its victim ; the worms 
did gnaw upon him. Was this confusion to last for 
ever ? I believe that the words, ' His soul was not 
left in Hades ; His body did not see corruption,' are a 
removal of it, once and for ever. I have no right to 



180 . THE EARTH A PLACE OF SPIRITS. 

speak again of an unvisited, trackless region beyond the 
grave ; I have no right to people that region with forms 
of my fancy. Elysium and Stygian pools have vanished ; 
I have no right to call them into existence again. I 
have no right to accept the darkness which haunted the 
minds of patriarchs and prophets, and in which they 
believed it was a sin to dwell, as if it were intended 
for us. 

' But we mean by Hades, a place of Spirits ; do not 
you believe in that ? ' Certainly, I believe in a place 
where Spirits dwell. This earth is such a place ; we, 
who dwell in it, are spirits. There may be a multitude 
more dwelling in it, who have cast off their conditions of 
mortality, or who have never been subject to such condi- 
tions ; I do not know ; there is nothing to oppose such a 
belief — much, perhaps, to encourage it. As the butter- 
fly in its free flight may drop upon the leaf or flower, 
and taste its sweets, on which it fed as a caterpillar, or 
in which it lay wrapped as a chrysalis, so those who 
could just see the glories of the earth through its decay, 
and were sometimes so entranced by them as to forget 
their own greatness and their Father's house, may now 
enter fully and safely into the beauty which overpowered 
them, and make it the occasion for thanksgiving, or 
may be instruments in leading us to an apprehension of 
it. There may be many more places for Spirits in those 
innumerable worlds which the Astronomer is discover- 
ing to us, and which we shall delight in and. wonder at 



THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. 181 

the more, as we become more convinced that they are 
God's worlds, and that not one of them can have been 
made without Him who is the Light of man. The 
question is, whether, above and beyond all these, I 
must invent a place which my senses do not tell me of, 
which Science does not open to me — not for spirits, 
but for shadows; and use the language of Scrip- 
ture which, apparently, is meant to deliver me from 
such a dreary necessity, as the excuse for it. 

' But Christ went and preached to the spirits in 
prison.' I rejoice to believe it. I do not, indeed, know, 
more than St. Augustine did, to what age or place that 
preaching refers ; and may think with him f that the 
words of St. Peter, literally taken, point more to the time 
of ]SToah than to a later time. But be that as it may, 
I thank God that Christendom, even in some of those 
traditions wherein there has been most of vagueness 
and fancy, has borne witness to the fact that Christ is 
the Lord of all spirits, who have lived in all times, and 
that He is the great deliverer of spirits. I thank God 
that men have been sure that there was a justification 
for that faith in Scripture, whether it is to be found in 
the particular texts to which they appealed, or not. But 
how that preaching to spirits in prison warrants me in 
building a prison for them, which, according to no laws 
that the Scripture teaches us about spirits, could hold 
them; a place for the disembodied — I have yet to be 
informed. 



182 HEAVEN AND HELL. 

i But, your language, pushed to its consequences, might 
prove that there is no Heaven and, no Hell.' Forgive 
me; that is the very consequence which I dread from 
the perplexity into which you have led us. I believe 
that Christ came into the world expressly to reveal the 
kingdom of Heaven, and to bring us into it. He and 
His Apostles speak of it as the kingdom of righteous- 
ness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost. They present 
Righteousness, Love, Truth, to us as substantial reali- 
ties, as the Nature of the Living and Eternal God; 
manifested in the Only-begotten Son ; inherited by all 
who claim to be made in His image. And since they 
reveal Heaven to us, they of necessity make known Hell 
also. The want of Righteousness, Truth, Love, the 
state which is contrary to these, is and must be Hell. 

1 Mystical! mystical! States, not places! So we 
expected.' A danger to be feared; and one to be care- 
fully avoided. I have tried to avoid it, by saying that 
I know of no place for disembodied spirits. I cannot 
understand men realizing a state except in some place. 
I do not try to understand it. I find some spirits in 
different places of this earth very miserable, and others 
in a certain degree of blessedness. I do not find that 
the place in which they are, makes the difference. The 
most fertile and beautiful may be the most accursed ; the 
naturally sterile may be more desirable. I should con- 
clude from these observations, if I had nothing else to 
guide me, that the moral and spiritual condition of the 



god's laws the same everywhere. 183 

inhabitants is the means of making a heaven or a hell 
of this earth. Scripture sustains this conclusion. All 
it tells me of the kingdom of Heaven, shows me that 
man must anywhere be blessed, if he has the knowledge 
of God and is living as His willing subject; everywhere 
accursed, if he is ignorant of God and at war with 
Him. This I have a right to say, I know. And if I 
believe God's revelation of His Son, I may know a little 
more. I may be sure that death — as Butler maintains 
from analogy — does not change the substance of the 
human creature, or any of its powers or moral conditions, 
but only removes that which had crushed its substance, 
checked the exercise of its powers, kept its true moral 
conditions out of sight. I may conclude, even if Christ 
did not tell me so expressly in all His parables, that the 
laws of God's kingdom in its different regions, are not 
different ; that one must explain the other ; that every- 
where to know God, and work for God and with God, 
to help His creatures, to cry and labour for the extirpa- 
tion of evil, must be the good of spirits formed in God's 
image ; that everywhere sympathy, fellowship, affection, 
must be the condition of right human existence ; self- 
ishness, its plague and contradiction. I cannot believe 
the good anywhere, in any creatures, to have reached 
its climax, because the Scriptures and reason teach me 
that there must be an eternal growth in the knowledge 
of God, and in the power of serving Him. And as long- 
as there is any evil in the universe, I must suppose, 



184 I AM THE KESUKKECTION. 

seeing that God and His Son desire its overthrow, that 
good spirits also desire its overthrow. Further than 
this I dare not go. And this, it seems to me, should be 
enough to make our zeal in proclaiming the Gospel of 
men's deliverance from evil, and death, and hell, very 
strong and vehement, and in exhorting our brethren not 
to reject so great a salvation; seeing that left to our- 
selves, without a Redeemer and a Father, there must 
be a continual descent into a lower depth. It cannot 
signify much to me, or any man, whether I call that 
depth Hades or Gehenna. To me the Hades becomes a 
Gehenna, because my own self becomes one, if I cannot 
be raised out of myself, and brought into sympathy 
with God's order, and God's love. _ 

4. When Jesus said to Martha, l Thy brother shall 
rise again,' she, taught in the popular school of the time, 
answered, ' I know that he shall rise in the resurrection 
at the last day.' ' Jesus answered,' says St. John, ' I 
am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And who- 
soever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.' It 
seems to me sometimes, in low and desponding moods, 
that in the nineteenth century of the Christian Church, 
we have got back to Martha's point of view, — that we 
believe just what the Pharisees had instructed her to be- 
lieve ; — that the glorious mystery implied in the words 
by which our Lord raised her out of that condition of 
mind, and in the act which confirmed them, has perished 



THE RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO UNITARIANS. 185 

out of the circle of our convictions. But I am sure this is 
not so, and that it only seems to he so, hecause we judge 
of the inward belief of human beings — of that deep and 
•secret wisdom which they receive from above — by the 
hard and formal propositions which they have caught 
from us, and have probably misunderstood. This dis- 
tinction — which I find it more and more necessary to 
keep in mind respecting ourselves, that I may feel our 
sins, and God's mercy — is also a great comfort in 
thinking of Unitarians. To me, nothing sounds harder 
and colder than their mode of talking about Christ's 
Resurrection. In old times they clung to the belief with 
great tenacity; it was the main article of their faith. 
The Resurrection, they said, proved the truth of im- 
mortality, which philosophers had always disputed. It 
proved also the truth of the Christian religion. Appa- 
rently the translation of the first statement is, that a 
stupendous violation of all the laws and principles of 
the universe was divinely ordained, to convince men of 
a truth which they had never been able to forget ; which 
had haunted them, and given birth to the most frightful 
superstitions ; from which the most modern wisdom hopes 
that we may at last be rescued. As to the second reason, 
a man is compelled to ask, ' And what is the religion 
which this stupendous anomaly is to establish ' ? for it 
cannot itself he the religion ; it is described as a means 
to an end; a mere mode of demonstration. Is it to 
show that certain great moral maxims are sound and 



186 priestley's faith. 

true, which would commend themselves to the conscience 
without any such evidence, and which cannot be obeyed 
at all the more, if it were multiplied a thousandfold ? 
Both these difficulties would seem to have been in- 
creased greatly, by the perseverance with which Priestley 
and the early Unitarians maintained the simplest mate- 
rialism, denying the existence of a soul, and holding that 
the body slept till some distant Resurrection-day. And 
yet I am sure that the faith of these Unitarians in the 
Resurrection was often most strong, most energetic. It 
bore them through many outward difficulties, made them 
ready to encounter popular indignation and contumely, 
saved them from the temptation, — which must have been 
often great, as the correspondence between Gibbon and 
Priestley shows, — to cast in their lot with the accom- 
plished infidels, who respected them for their knowledge 
of physics, and despised them for their want of boldness 
in not wholly repudiating the supernatural. A belief 
which could bear these fruits, I at least feel that I have 
no right to speak slightingly of; nor do I discover that 
I have what German doctors call ' a theological interest ' 
in undervaluing it. I rather think, that if I were 
thoroughly rooted in the principles which I have en* 
deavoured to assert in this and the foregoing Essays, I 
should give thanks for these signs and witnesses that 
Christ is with those who seem to speak most slightingly 
of Him, testifying to them that He is risen indeed, and 
that they have a life in Him which no speculations or 



CONCLUSION. 187 

denials of theirs have been able to rob them of, even as 
we have a life in Him, which our sins often hinder us 
from acknowledging, but cannot quench. Since, how- 
ever, it is evident that the younger Unitarians cannot 
retain the ground which their fathers held ; since they 
must either give up all belief in the fact of the Resur- 
rection, or find some divine basis for it, which was not 
perceived by them, — I do very earnestly ask them to 
reflect upon the deeds and words on which I have been 
trying to comment, and not to let the theories of my 
brethren, or mine, hinder them from uniting with us in a 
confession which existed before all these theories, and 
will live when they have perished. 



ESSAY IX. 

ON JUSTIFICATION" BY FAITH. 

Wheneyee such broad statements are put forward as 
those which I have endeavoured to defend in my last four 
essays, — that Christ is the Lord of man ; that He took 
the nature of man ; that He reconciled man and God by 
the sacrifice of Himself ; that He rose again, as the Re- 
deemer of man, from death, the grave, and hell, — there 
arises in our minds a fear which is both natural and 
righteous. Does not such language overlook the notorious 
fact that good and evil men are mixed together in this 
world, — that the evil far outnumber the good ? Does it 
not break down moral distinctions, which it is our first 
duty to preserve ? Does it not practically deny that 
God approves the just and condemns the wicked ? 

No one should be weary of answering these objections, 
or should complain because they rise up again and again 
after he fancies that he has disposed of them. Though 
the whole purpose of his argument may have been to 
show how essentially and eternally opposed Good and 
Evil are, how impossible it is that they ever can blend 



HOW TO SEPAEATE THE GOOD AND BAD. 189 

together ; what, according to God's revelation of Himself, 
He has done and is doing to separate them, — he must 
not be the least grieved if he should be met at last with 
the observation, ' What you talk of the redemption of 
mankind, means nothing after all. It is a mere dogma 
or technicality, with which those who are not in contact 
with the actual world may amuse themselves. We who 
are, know that, instead of identifying ourselves with 
the mass of the creatures around us, we must learn how 
we may become most entirely unlike them, or we never 
shall be like Him who you say is perfectly Good and 
True.' Such words, even though they may be uttered 
in a very contemptuous tone, would not excite any dis- 
pleasure in us, if our own minds were in a right and 
healthy state. We should welcome them as signs that 
the speaker had an honest and deep conviction which he 
will not part with, and which must be thoroughly satis- 
fied before he takes in any other. And it is the less 
excusable to manifest any irritation when we are the 
subjects of this kind of animadversion, because we 
know, or ought to know, that this difficulty, in one 
shape or other, has given occupation to every age of the 
Christian Church ; that it has been no sooner over- 
come by a mighty effort in one direction, than it has 
reappeared in another ; that it has, therefore, all the 
tokens of being a practical human difficulty, and one of 
so grave a kind, that people have been compelled to seek 
an explanation of it ; and that when they have sought, 



190 LINE OF DEMARCATION ; BAPTISM. 

they have found. The past experiences of the world, 
in this and in all cases, are not warrants for discourage- 
ment ; if we use them faithfully, they are full of hope. 

1. The Church, after the days of the Apostles, was 
no longer contending chiefly with Jewish sects, which 
claimed to be portions of the one divine nation. It 
was in the midst of a huge empire which hated it, and 
with the principles of which it was at war. Its members 
must carefully distinguish themselves from those among 
whom they dwelt, with whom they trafficked, who were 
under the same protection or tyranny. Baptism was 
the sign of their fellowship. Baptism must separate 
the churchman from the common earthly man. It could 
not merely denote an outward contrast. The new dis- 
pensation had penetrated below the surface to the roots 
of things. Baptism must import the most inward puri- 
fication, the removal of that common evil which all men 
had inherited from Adam. ' Then,' it was argued, ' he 
who wants this, is necessarily lying under that common 
evil ; he can be looked upon only as a natural creature.' 
There were innumerable checks and counteractions to 
this opinion. It was incompatible with the interest 
which the more spiritual of the Fathers felt in the en- 
quiries of Gentile philosophers, as bearing upon all the 
deepest mysteries of the Gospel ; it was still more ob- 
viously incompatible with the view which they took of 
their own internal conflicts, before they entered into the 
fold of Christ. But it became the formal recognised 



POST-BAPTISMAL SIN. 191 

school maxim, and it could not be that without having 
the most direct influence upon practice. The influence 
was felt more bitterly and painfully within the Church 
than without it. Many Christians were found to be 
leading as sinful lives as heathens. It could not be 
doubted that their responsibilities were greater, and that, 
therefore, their sin must be greater. An inference was 
speedily deduced from that fact. The blessings of Bap- 
tism were said to be infinite for those who first received 
it. Their sins were blotted out ; they were new crea- 
tures. But the blessings were exhausted in the act. 
Every subsequent step, in the immense majority of cases, 
perhaps in every case, was a step out of purity into evil. 
The white robes were soiled ; the divine offering for 
evil had been spurned ; pardon could only be hoped for 
by continual acts of repentance and mortification. 

In this instance, as in the other, the counteracting 
influences were most numerous. The Psalms was still 
the great book of Church devotion. They spoke of 
flying to God as a refuge from all enemies ; of sins 
being forgiven and iniquities covered ; of God not de- 
siring sacrifice and offerings. The Creed proclaimed 
belief in forgiveness of sin, as part of the ordinary and 
necessary faith of a Christian man ; the Lord's Prayer 
taught him to say ' Our Father ;' the Eucharist was 
a continual thanksgiving for a sacrifice offered and 
accepted. Still the doctrine of post-baptismal sin had 
been proclaimed ; the understanding could not refute it ; 



192 EFFECT OF THE DOCTRINE. 

the sin-stricken conscience confirmed it ; the natural 
inference that it was much safer to defer baptism till the 
latest moment was drawn, and, as in the case of the first 
Christian emperor, reduced into practice. Constantine 
had settled the debates of the Donatists and presided at 
a Council concerning the deepest mysteries of the faith 
before he received the rite of initiation. He availed 
himself of the delay to murder his son, and to 
leave orders for the slaughter of the most conspicuous 
members of his family. 

If this memorable example of the moral consequences 
of the doctrine had been wanting, there was more than 
enough in the despair with which it inspired numbers of 
those who had received the Sacrament, in the experi- 
ments to which that despair drove them, in the utter 
confusion of their thoughts respecting the character of 
God and the services which He required of them, to 
startle its most resolute champion. But it continued 
to dwell in the minds of good men, because for them it 
was, to a great extent, inoperative ; their love for God 
and His family, and for the whole world, made any 
opinion they held a reason for severity to themselves, 
and for tenderness to their brethren. They could not see 
any logical escape from this one ; they conspired with 
bad men to suggest practices for curing outward sins, or 
removing the sores they left in the heart, which strength- 
ened and deepened it. And thus it seemed as if the 
great line which separated the Church from the world 



THE RELIGIOUS AND THE SECULAR. 193 

was one which could not be wisely passed ; for, by the 
Church's confession, the majority of those who were 
within it were not better than the rest of men, and 
were exposed to a more dreadful doom. 

But if this line was not deep enough, others might be 
drawn. One class of baptized men might be allowed 
to rest contented with an ordinary secular life, — to 
marry, rule the household, and do those works which 
were considered godly by the patriarchs and prophets, 
#nd which St. Paul commanded the ministers, as well 
as the members, of the churches he founded, to perform ; 
others might become religious — might eschew, as far 
as possible, human ties and obligations, and give them- 
selves to the service of God. Here was another expe- 
riment for the purpose of separating the righteous from 
the unrighteous. A church was to be set up within 
the Church. The whole fellowship was not one of 
saints, but it was one which might nurture saints. 
There were two great counteractions to the habit ol 
mind which this division indicated. The first lay in the 
feeling of churchmen that they were meant to rule the 
world, and therefore must take part in all the most 
secular affairs of it, whatever danger there was of de- 
filement from them. The second arose from the strange 
discovery, that those who were felt and confessed to be 
the truest saints in virtue of the influence which they 
exerted were precisely those who broke down the 
barriers which had been raised between them and ordi- 





194 EFFECTS OF THE DIVISION. 

naiy people. They ate and drank with publicans and 
sinners. They were especially witnesses to the people 
of a common Friend and Redeemer, who cared for all. 
But these resisting agencies enable us to under stand 
better the effect of the belief itself on the morality of 
the Church. Its dealings with the ordinary business of 
the world took a particularly cunning, sordid, debasing 
form, because that ordinary business was supposed to be 
destined only for a lower Christian caste ; the very sym- 
pathies which were most truly human and divine looked 
artificial, because, according to the theory, they were 
portions of the saintly ideal, and the means by which 
it was exhibited to men. And the lowering effect of the 
scheme upon those who gathered from it that their calling 
was to shuffle through existence as they could, and only 
to expect that divine helpers would be found waiting for 
them at the close of it, no words can describe. 

2. At last there came a clear and effectual testimony 
against these notions, and the practices to which they 
had given birth. And it took this form : — It said, ' You 
are seeking to make yourselves just or righteous before 
God. You cannot do it. There is but one Righteous- 
ness, that which is in Christ, for the worst and the best 
of us. You are seeking to deliver yourselves by this 
and that experiment from the sense of the evils you 
have committed. You cannot do it. Faith in the Son 
of God is the only deliverance for the conscience of any 
man. He is not free till he trusts Him ; till he is 



PROTEST AGAINST IT. 195 

free, he cannot do the works of a freeman, but only 
those of a slave.' The Eeformers who "bore this protest 
were obliged to carry it still further back. They were 
forced to say, as St. Paul had said before them, God 
Himself is the justifier. He has given Christ for our 
sins, and has raised Him again for our justification. 
He calls you, each of you, to know that Just One, in 
whom you are accepted. 

It is impossible not to see that this was levelling 
language ; it was breaking down, to all appearance, the 
barriers between the righteous and the wicked, barriers 
which centuries had been at work to build up. Nay, it 
seemed as if this language carried one beyond the limits 
of the Church T as if any man might claim the righteous- 
ness of Christ, — might have his conscience set free from 
sin, — might believe that God had justified him. The 
Romanists charged both these consequences of their doc- 
trine upon their opponents. ' By preaching faith Avithout 
the deeds of the law,' they said, ' you efface moral dis- 
tinctions ; by speaking so generally as you do of Christ's 
death and resurrection, you seem to take away the pri- 
vileges of the baptized man.' The Eeformers retaliated. 
' You,' they said, ' are guilty of the sin you impute to us. 
You have overthrown all difference between the pure and 
the impure ; you have done so inevitably, because you 
have destroyed all difference between those who believe 
and those who do not believe.' That being the danger 
which they dreaded most, they set themselves to con- 



196 NEW DIVISIONS. 

sider how they might most successfully avoid it. The 
result was a new set of experiments to separate the 
Church from the world, and then to create a Church 
within the Church. Faith justifies, but it must be ascer- 
tained who have faith. Christ's is the only righteous- 
ness; but to whom is that righteousness imputed ? God 
calls men to the knowledge of His Son ; but if He calls, 
does He not also reject ? It seemed to Protestant divines 
and laymen just as necessary to invent plans for dividing 
the faithful from the unbelieving, — those who belonged 
to Christ from those who had no relation to Him, — the 
elect from the reprobate, — as it had ever seemed neces^- 
sary to the Romanist to divide heathens from baptized 
men, ecclesiastics from the laity, the saint from the 
ordinary Christian. And I think it must be owned, 
that the effects in each case have been similar. The 
great moral distinctions, which God's law proclaims, 
and which the conscience of man affirms, have not been 
deepened but obliterated ; fictitious maxims and stand- 
ards have been introduced, which are as unfavourable 
to the common honesty of daily life, as they are to any 
higher righteousness which we should seek as citizens 
of God's kingdom, as creatures formed in His image. 
It seems as if faith signified a persuasion that God will 
not punish us hereafter for the sins we have committed 
here, because we have that persuasion ; as if some men 
were accounted righteous, for Christ's sake, by a mere 
deception, it not being the fact that they are righteous ; 



THEOKIES AND WITNESSES AGAINST THEM. 197 

as if God pleased of mere arbitrariness that certain men 
should escape His wrath, and that certain men should 
endure the full measure of it. I find it hard even to 
state these propositions, without being guilty of a kind 
of profaneness, and a kind of uncharitableness, so shock- 
ing do they sound when they are put into plain words, 
and so wrong is it to suppose that any man holds them in 
the sense which those words seem to convey. But it is 
not wrong — it is a great duty — to set them out broadly 
and nakedly, that those who have dallied with thoughts 
which are capable of such a construction may shudder, 
and may ask themselves whether this, or anything like 
this, is their meaning ; or, if not, what they do mean. 
Provided always, that we admit, in this instance, as in 
that of the Komanists, what enormous influences there 
are at work to neutralize these notions and statements ; 
even to change them into their direct opposites ; how 
strong and earnest their desire is for freedom from sin, 
and their willingness to bear any punishment, rather than 
be slaves of it, who seem as if they thought their faith 
was merely to procure them an exemption from penal- 
ties which others must suffer ; how serious their zeal for 
God's truth, who seem, by their words, as if they could 
bear to suspect Him of a fiction ; how thoroughly in 
their hearts they acknowledge God to be without par- 
tiality, and to be altogether just, whose phrases ascribe 
to Him a principle of conduct upon which they would 
be ashamed to act. I repeat what I said before ; the 



198 OUE DUTY. 

more frankly and thankfully we make these admis- 
sions, the more we are bound to labour, that the faith 
which is in the hearts of men may not be extinguished 
in them and utterly misrepresented to their children, by 
the perilous unbelief which they allow to mingle with it. 
For the sake of the precious good, we must wrestle with 
its counterfeit. And this, I believe, we can only do by 
resolving once for all, that since every attempt which 
has been hitherto made to draw lines and limitations 
about the Gospel of God, for the purpose of dividing the 
righteous from the wicked, has tended to confound them 
— to put evil for good, and good for evil — we will abstain 
in future from all such attempts, and will ask seriously 
whether God has not Himself established eternal dis- 
tinctions, which become clear to us when, and only 
when, we are content to be the heralds of his free and 
universal love. I think it may be shown, not only 
that these distinctions are most recognised when we 
look upon all men as interested in Christ's Death and 
Resurrection, but that we cannot do justice to the zeal 
of Romanists for Baptism, of Protestants for Faith, 
that we cannot reconcile the one with the other, paying 
the highest honour to each, till we claim the Avider 
ground from which they are both inclined to drive us. 
I think that we shall find that the Scriptures interpreted 
simply, interpreted especially in connexion with the 
fact of the Resurrection which has lately occupied us, 
explains and vindicates each of these apparently incon- 



THE JUSTIFICATION OF CHRIST. 199 

sistent tenets, but explains and vindicates them by tak- 
ing from each its exclusive and inhuman, and with 
that, its fictitious and immoral, character. 

3. If we start from the point at which we arrived in 
the last Essay, and believe that the Christ, the King 
of man's spirit, having taken the flesh of man, willingly 
endured the death of which that flesh is heir, and that 
His Father, by raising Him from the dead, declared 
that death and the grave and hell could not hold Him, 
because He was His righteous and well-beloved Son, 
we have that first and highest idea of Justification 
which St. Paul unfolds to us. God justifies the Man 
who perfectly trusted in Him ; declares Him to have 
the only righteousness which He had ever claimed, — 
the only one which it would not have been a sin and a 
fall for Him to claim — the righteousness of His Father 
— the righteousness which was His so long as He would 
have none of his own, so long as He was content to give 
up Himself. He was put to death in the flesh, he was 
justified in the Spirit ; this is the Apostle's language ; 
this is his clear, noble, satisfactory distinction, which is 
reasserted in various forms throughout the New Testa- 
ment. But St. Paul takes it for grajited, that this 
justification of the Son of God and the Son of man was 
his own justification — his own, not because he was Saul 
of Tarsus, not because he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, 
but because he was a man. All his zeal as an Apostle of 
the Gentiles, all his arguments against his own country- 



200 JUSTIFICATION OF MEN. 

men, have this ground and no other ; the one would 
have worn out from contempt and persecution, the 
other would have fallen utterly to pieces, if he had not 
been assured that Christ's resurrection declared Him to 
be the Son of man, the Head of man, and therefore, 
that His justification was the justification of each man. 
He had not arrived at this discovery without tremendous 
personal struggles. He had felt far more deeply than 
Job did, how much he was at war with the law of his 
being, the law which he was created to obey ; he had 
felt far more deeply than Job, that there was a righte- 
ousness near him, and in him, in which his inner mind 
delighted. He had been sure that there must be a 
Redeemer to give the righteousness the victory over 
the evil ; to deliver him out of the power to which he 
was sold, to satisfy the spirit in him which longed for 
good. He had thanked God through Jesus Christ his 
Lord. And now he felt that he was a righteous man ; 
that he had the only righteousness which a man could 
have — the righteousness of God — the righteousness 
which is upon faith — the righteousness which is not for 
Jew more than for Gentile — which is for all alike. 

How impossible, then, was it for him to receive Bap- 
tism as if it were merely the outward badge of a 
profession, a sign which separated the sect of the Naza- 
renes from other Jews, or other men ! If it marked him 
out as a Christian, that was because it denoted that he 
would no more be the member of any sect, of any 



MEANING OF BAPTISM. 201 

partial society whatever, — that he was claiming his re- 
lation to the Son of God, the Head of the whole human 
race. It must import his belief that this Son of God, 
and not Adam, was the true root of Humanity — that 
from Him, and not from any ancestor, each man derived 
his life. It must import his acknowledgment, that in 
himself in his mere flesh, dwelt no good thing ; but that 
he was not obliged or intended to live as a creature of 
flesh, as a separate self-seeking being ; that it was utterly 
contrary to God's order that he should. But if baptism 
imported so much, it must import more. He had not 
devised it, or invented it. An act which expressed the 
giving up of himself, could not be one which only sig- 
nified that he had made a choice between two religions, 
abandoning one, adopting another. He had clone nothing 
of the kind. He had not abandoned his Jewish faith ; 
he was holding it fast, maintaining that it had been 
proved to be true throughout. He was not adopting a 
Christian religion. He was simply submitting himself 
to a Son of David as being also the Son of God. 
Baptism, then> he accepted, not as the sign of his pro- 
fession, but as the ordinance of God for men, as His 
declaration of that which is true concerning men, of the 
actual relation in which men stand to Him. If He had 
justified His Son, by raising Him from the dead, — if, in 
that act, He had justified the race for which Christ had 
died, — then it was lawful to tell men that they were 
justified before God, that they were sons of God in the 



only-begotten Son ; it was lawful to tell them that the 
act which, by Christ's command, accompanied the 
preaching of the Gospel to all nations, signified this, 
and nothing less than this. If Christ was not the actual 
Mediator between God and man — if His resurrection did 
not declare that God confessed Him in that character, 
and thereby confessed men to be righteous in Him — 
Baptism was a nullity, a mere delusion ; it ought not 
to be associated with the proclamation of facts so stu- 
pendous ; a message professing to come from God, who 
is a Spirit, and concerning all the mysteries of man's 
spiritual life, should not be linked to a poor petty rite 
which denoted merely his external position. 

By declaring in plain words, that they who were 
baptized into Christ, were baptized into His death, that 
they put on Christ, that they were to count themselves 
dead indeed to sin, but alive unto God, risen with Christ, 
St. Paul pointed out the ever- effectual protection against 
the error into which the Church afterwards fell; the 
one great divine distinction for which it substituted its 
awkward and mischievous theories and practices. So 
long as baptism was really felt to denote the true and 
eternal law of man's relation to God, so long it could 
give no excuse for those notions respecting post-bap- 
tismal sin, out of which such enormous and com- 
plicated evils were developed. How could any one who 
believed that God had declared His Son to be the root 
of righteousness for every man, — that they were baptized 



TRUST ALWAYS RIGHT. 203 

into Him, adopted to be sons of God in Him, — teach any 
human creature that he had had a certain righteousness, 
justification, freedom from evil, for a moment, but that 
when he had yielded to the lusts of the flesh, or the 
power of the Evil Spirit, these blessings were his no 
longer? Of course it would be so, if his righteousness 
were his own property, if it could ever become his own 
property. But if what baptism proclaimed was precisely, 
that it never could, that the notion of a self-righteousness 
is false in principle, the greatest of all contradictions, 
then it must be the right and duty of men at all times to 
turn t6 Him in whom they are created, redeemed, justi- 
fied ; their trust was either lawful at no time, or it was 
lawful at every time; on no principle save that of con- 
tinual trust in the Lord of his spirit, could a man assert 
the privilege and glory of his baptism, and rise above 
his enemies. Whatever doctrine robbed him of that 
trust, or led him to build his life and conduct upon dis- 
trust, was earthly, sensual, devilish. 

The Reformers, I conceive, were not denying the 
strongest assertions of St. Paul respecting baptism, 
when they used this language, and called on all men to 
believe in the Son of God for their justification. In fact, 
they appealed to these assertions continually ; they were 
their most effectual weapons. Nor, I conceive, did they 
pervert or weaken these words, when they said that the 
Church was falling into the condition of a mere world, 
and that faithful men must be the instruments of raising 



204 PROTESTANT SINS. 

it out of that condition. Faith, they said, — and the con- 
science of men confirmed their words, — is the ground of 
right hearty action ; unbelief makes it impossible. 

' Yes,' replies the Romanist, l and your Protestant 
mode of reforming the universal Church was to split it 
into a thousand sects ; your Protestant way of asserting 
the preciousness of faith was, to leave us nothing in 
which we should believe.' The mockery is severe, and 
it is deserved. Sectarianism has been the effect of the 
schemes which Protestants have adopted for the purposes 
of defining who have a right to be members of Christ's 
Church, and who have not ; loss of a distinct and com- 
mon object of faith has been the effect of the schemes 
which Protestants have adopted to ascertain who have 
and who have not the gift of faith, or the right to believe. 
They have sought to be wiser than God, and God has 
confounded their vanity. He had laid one foundation 
for a Universal Church, and they thought they might 
make foundations for themselves. He has established 
the great distinctions, that there is in every man a spirit 
which seeks righteousness, and a flesh which stoops to 
evil; that there is with every man the Christ, who would 
quicken his spirit, and deliver his soul and body out of 
death, and with every man an evil power, who tempts 
him to become the slave of his flesh, and so to destroy 
his soul and body; that men are in Christ, the true 
Lord of their spirit, claimed as sons of God, and that 
they, by distrusting Him, and yielding to the. devil, 



THEIR CARNAL AND SPIRITUAL MEN. 205 

become utterly unlike Him, forming themselves in the 
image of the father whom they have chosen. And we, 
for these great practical divine contrasts, which will be 
brought out in the clear light of God's jddgment-day, 
and which nothing in earth, or hell, or heaven, can alter 
or modify, must have our own sets of spiritual and car- 
nal men; of those who can make it clear to us that they 
believe, and of those who cannot: divisions which are 
so many premiums to hypocrisy, so many hindrances 
to honest men, so many temptations to him whose ex- 
periences have acquired for him the title ' religious ' 
to think that he has not a world and flesh and devil to 
struggle with, while he may be convincing a looker- 
on, by his ordinary behaviour, that he is an obedient 
slave of all three ; which tempt those who are treated 
as carnal and worldly, to believe what they are told of 
themselves, to act as if they had not that longing for 
good, which they yet know that they have, and which 
God does not disown, for His Son has awakened it, 
though His servants may be stifling it. 

Most assuredly the curse of God is upon these Pro- 
testant devices, and we shall feel it more and more. But 
is the refuge in going back to those who have been guilty 
of framing devices for the same ungodly end; devices, 
the condemnation of which is written in the history of 
the world ? Is it not rather in the bolder, freer procla- 
mation of God's universal Gospel, of a Church founded 
on Christ the Son of God and the Son of man, of His 



206 j THE CLAPHAM SCHOOL. 

justification of each man as a spiritual creature, a child 
of God created to trust Him, to know Him, to exhibit 
His likeness ? 

I have alluded to the sympathy which existed between 
orthodox English Churchmen and Unitarians in the last 
century, on the subject of the conversions and spiritual 
struggles upon which the Evangelical teachers dwelt so 
much. There was an alliance also between these same 
parties against the leading Evangelical doctrine. Both 
alike foretold that the consequence of holding and preach- 
ing justification by faith, must be the weakening of 
moral obligations. ' A high-flown pedantical morality 
might be cultivated by those who adhered to this tenet ; 
plain home-spun English honesty and good faith would 
be undermined by it.' 

When the Evangelical teachers appealed to our Articles, 
in defence of their proposition, they used a good argu- 
mentum ad hominem for one division of their opponents ; 
it had no weight at all for the other. The evidence 
they required was of a different kind, and it was not 
wanting. The Edinburgh Keview, by adopting Sir 
James Stephen's delightful Essay ' On the Clapham 
School,' has practically declared, that the cause of which 
it was the ablest champion forty years ago, is not now 
defensible; that the men who, if the words of its ac- 
complished clerical ally were true, must have been 
utterly fantastical, as well as fanatical — governing them- 



THEIR WITNESS FOE TEUTH. 207 

selves by some absurd imaginary principle, which has 
nothing to do with the business of the world — were really 
simple, clear-hearted, clear-headed men, who were, faith- 
ful in their callings, who infused a new and juster tone 
into commercial life, who compelled politicians to ac- 
knowledge other maxims than those of party, another 
object than that of advancing themselves. There can 
be now no manner of doubt that the existence of such 
men had the most purifying, elevating influence upon 
English society; that they did very much to overthrow 
that morality of sentiment, which the Anti-Jacobin 
could only ridicule, and to counteract the stock-jobbing 
tendencies of the day, which some of those whom the 
Anti-Jacobin most lauded were nurturing. Their one 
great testimony, that a man can never be a chattel, was 
the most significant practical commentary on all they 
said of the worth of the individual soul; a proof how 
thoroughly their doctrine possessed their lives: an ex- 
ample to all after generations; seeing that the very time 
they chose for making this protest was the one in which 
the doctrine of the individual rights of men was fright- 
ening them and most of their political associates, seeing 
that they were accused of promoting Jacobinism as well 
as of putting the wealth and commerce of the great Eng- 
lish cities in peril, and that they nevertheless persevered , 
in the faith that evil must be protested against at all 
hazards, and that that which is wrong in the tenden- 
cies of a time, can only be effectually resisted by the 



208 APPEAL TO UNITARIANS. 

assertion of the right which is most akin to it. This 
was faith, and these men were in the true sense ' just by 
faith.' Their outward acts proceeded from a principle; 
that principle was, Trust in an unseen Person. 

Why do those who talk most of justification by faith 
in our day exhibit no similar fruits ? Why is English 
society not raised or purified by their presence in it ? 
Why are the tradesmen among them as ready as any 
others to mix chicory with their coffee ? the merchants 
and politicians to job? the divines to slander? Is it 
not because they believe justification by faith, instead 
of believing in Christ the justifier? Is not the whole 
principle changed ? Is not the formula which represents 
the principle doing duty for it ? 

I entreat the Unitarians seriously to consider the lives 
of those persons whom they cannot for one moment sus- 
pect of hypocrisy, to whose honesty and simplicity of 
character they are willing to do homage ; and then to 
compare them with those whom they have a right to 
condemn as loud, talking, unreal bigots, bitter against 
all who differ from them, in proportion as they feel their 
own ground insecure. I entreat them to ask themselves 
whether the most striking characteristic of the former, 
so far as, they are able to judge, is not faith in, and 
devotion to a living Person, whom they reverence as 
their Lord, and to whom they cleave as their Friend ? 
whether the others are not as evidently fighting for a 
notion or a theory ? Supposing this to be the case, then 



UNITAEIAN AND EVANGELICAL ALLIES. 209 

are not the former holding with a strong grasp that very 
belief, which the Unitarian idea of Christ would wrest 
from them ? Would not the loss to the other, if that idea 
were forced upon them, be very inconsiderable indeed? 
If the anti-orthodox faith obtained the ascendency which 
it once held among the Vandals in Africa, and were as 
persecuting as it was among them, is there not the 
highest probability that this latter class would supply 
a band of ready, promising, very soon vehement, con- 
verts to the new system? is it not certain that the 
former would withstand it to the death ? 

There is one fact recorded by the faithful and affection- 
ate biographer of the Clapham school, which I should be 
very dishonest and cowardly if I suppressed. It is, that 
one of the neighbours of Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Thorn- 
ton, who was united with them in many of their bene- 
volent projects, and in close personal friendship, was 
professedly and notoriously a Unitarian. It must have 
puzzled him greatly at first, to explain how all the plain 
and practical virtues which he saw in them, not only 
accompanied — that he might have accounted for on his 
general maxims of toleration — but manifestly flowed 
out of, the faith which he had been taught was so likely 
to beget immorality. It may have puzzled them almost 
equally to understand how he, an opposer of that faith, 
not only performed right acts, but exhibited, as we are 
told he did, that habitual rectitude, which they would 
ordinarily and rightly attribute to some deep root. I 



210 COWPER; BLANCO WHITE. 

suppose he came at last to some solution of his difficulty 
which satisfied him. I should think their faith in Christ 
the Justifier must have been the solution of theirs. 
As that grew stronger, they must have said more 
and more frequently, ' Thou, O Lord, art more than 
all our systems and calculations. Thou mayest per- 
chance have rule in a thousand hearts, where they are 
not admitted, even as it is clear Thou dost not rule in 
many where they are received.' And that conclusion, 
instead of leading them to Latitudinarianism, will have 
saved them from it. How could they ever give up their 
faith in Christ as a living Person, when they traced, not 
only all that was not evil in themselves, hut all that was 
good in any man, to Him? If they had not only seen 
that truth at certain times, but had been able to state it 
fully at all times, from how much of misery might they 
have saved some of their contemporaries, from how much 
vagueness and infidelity their descendants ! Need Cow- 
per have sunk into despair, if he had believed that 
Christ was in him at all times, and was not dependent 
upon his apprehension or faith ? Would his evangelical 
biographers have been reduced to the miserable — not 
always the successful — apology, that his madness was 
not caused or aggravated by his Christianity ? Might 
they not have had to give thanks that that was the 
cure of it ? If Blanco White had ever learnt to extend 
that belief to all men, would he have approached the 
confines of speculative atheism ? 



FAITH IN AN IDEA. 211 

I ask these questions with fear ; but I think, for 
many reasons, that they should be asked. And since 
the last of them has a very close interest for the new 
school of Unitarians, I would venture to offer one or two 
more thoughts for their reflection. They have learnt 
from Mr. Carlyle and others, to speak of faith in a tone 
altogether different from that which was common in the 
last generation. I would respectfully inquire of them, 
whether they are not, ever and anon, falling into the 
error which I have attributed to our modern Evangeli- 
cals, and which infects many beside them — that of 
making Faith itself an object of trust — almost of wor- 
ship ? I know how they will escape from the charge. 
1 Oh no ! ' they will say, 'we mean, not faith in Faith, but 
faith in an idea. Don't you know what Mr. Emerson says 
of the Mahometans, that they overthrew hosts, because 
they were horsed on an idea? What we object to is, your 
doctrine that faith in a Christian idea is the only faith.' 
I beg to disclaim any such representation of my doc- 
trine. I acknowledge that Mahomet triumphed over 
hosts, I acknowledge that he triumphed by faith. Yes ! 
by faith in a real living God. His opponents were 
horsed upon ideas; (or rather conceptions of their own 
mind;) therefore the horses and the riders were cast 
into the sea. I think that his faith could overcome 
much, because it was faith in a substance, a reality, a 
person. I do not think it could overcome the world, 
or the flesh, or the devil. I think all three have proved, 



212 THE VICTORY OVER THE WORLD. 

in the issue, too strong for the Mahometan. I accept 
the Apostle John's explanation of the two conditions 
which are necessary to a complete victory. It has stood 
the test of much experience, and will, I think, stand 
the test of all. ' This is the victory that overcometh 
the world; even our Faith.' ' Who is he that over- 
cometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is 
the Son of God?' 



ESSAY X. 



ON REGENERATION. 



Mr. Combe's Essay on the Physical Constitution of 
man has, I am told, had an enormous circulation, both 
here, and in Scotland. I cannot wonder at its success ; 
nor do I regret it, though I might not easily find a 
book from the conclusions of which I more entirely 
dissent. It has, I think, brought the question of educa- 
tion, and many other questions, to the right issue. What 
is the constitution of man? We want to know that. 
Till we know it, we cannot educate ; we cannot do much 
to benefit the condition of men, individually or socially. 
When we. know it, our main business will be to ask 
what there is which has hindered men from being in 
conformity with their constitution ; how they may be 
brought into conformity with it. That I understand to be 
Mr. Combe's main principle, and I heartily assent to it. 
I do not think it is now for the first time announced. 
I believe men have been trying to act upon it. But 
I believe also that many causes have prevented us from 
acting upon it consistently; that notions of education and 



214 PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 

reformation, inconsistent with this, have intruded them- 
selves into our minds ; that they are confusing us greatly; 
that any one who recals us to this sound and orthodox 
doctrine, is doing us a service. Mr. Combe, however, 
claims for himself an honour which did not belong to 
our ancestors. He says, that they knew' little or nothing 
of man's physical state, of the laws of his body, of the 
condition under which he exists as a citizen of this earth. 
I am not inclined to dispute either the charge against 
them, or the pretensions which he puts forth for himself. 
I have no doubt this was their special ignorance, and 
that it was the mother of a multitude of false theories 
and mischievous practices. I think God has given us 
great means of removing the primary error, and its 
fruits ; and that we are guilty in His sight, if we do 
not use them. 

But, further, Mr. Combe assumes that this knowledge 
which we have attained, respecting men's physical con- 
dition, is the only secure knowledge, the only knowledge 
upon which we can act. All other, he thinks, all which 
our ancestors supposed they had, is a mere collection of 
guesses. They did not agree about it themselves ; we 
agree about it still less. How can we teach men guesses? 
How can we apply them to practice ? When they are 
put into one scale, and ascertained laws into another, 
must not they kick the beam ? Practically, therefore, 
even if we have ever so much hankering after these 
guesses — ever so much of what we call Faith in them 



GUESSES AND LAWS. 215 

— we must leave them out of our calculation. And is it 
not probable that we shall find, at last, that we had the 
best possible right to leave them out ; that, in fact, these 
physical laws explain them ; that if we understand them, 
we understand the whole constitution of man ? 

To these questions I answer distinctly : Whenever 
guesses are balanced against laws, guesses must kick 
the beam; if divines and moralists have nothing but 
guesses to produce, and Mr. Combe has laws, it is not a 
matter of doubt but of certainty, that he will be the 
teacher of the world, and that they must make their way 
out of it as fast as they can. I admit, further, that there 
are a great many appearances in the history of the world 
. and in our present position, which may, very naturally, 
lead Mr. Combe and thousands of others to the conclu- 
sion that divines and moralists are guessers and nothing 
else.' Not a few of them have almost admitted that 
they have no certain ground to stand on. Many of 
them who do not, rest the proof that they can teach 
things which may and should be believed upon reasons 
which do not satisfy the understandings and consciences 
to which they are presented. The divisions of Chris- 
tendom, which have increased, and are increasing, seem 
to make out the strongest prima facie case in favour 
of Mr. Combe's practical decision. If every other method 
of education is laid aside and his adopted, as the only 
one which states can sanction or which is available 
for men universally, he and those who have joined 



216 REASONS FOR DISSENTING FROM MR. COMBE. 

with him in advocating it will he much less answerahle 
for the result, than we who have opposed him. 

After what I have said in previous essays, it would be 
great affectation to pretend that I have any doubt as to 
the final issue of that experiment. As I have throughout 
been tracing feelings and consciousnesses in men which 
point to some spiritual object, and which are uneasy, 
feverish, tormenting, precisely because that which they 
seek they cannot find, and because some faint, obscure 
image is offered to them as the substitute for it ; as 
I have maintained that these feelings and consciousnesses 
are not less active now than in former days, but, perhaps, 
more active — active in quarters where the influence of 
Church doctrines is utterly repudiated; as I have dif- 
fered from my brethren chiefly in confessing the wider 
extent of these consciousnesses, the evidence which proves 
them to exist where we should be inclined to ignore them ; 
as I have been reasoning with those who would build a 
new scheme of divinity on these very consciousnesses — 
one which is, they say, to be universal, and to displace our 
exclusive doctrines ; it cannot be very necessary that I 
should enter at large into my reasons for not supposing 
that we can provide for all the necessities of human 
beings, or set them altogether right, by treating them as 
creatures possessing a stomach, a liver, and a brain. 
It is, of course, an obvious and familiar theory, that 
these consciousnesses are secreted in the stomach, the 
liver, and the brain ; I am quite willing that any one 



GOOD THAT HIS DISCIPLES MAY DO. 217 

should hold that theory, and should try to work it 
out. I believe that in the course of his workings he 
will do much good; that he will continually observe, 
and may enable us to observe, the close connexion of 
these bodily functions with the thoughts and moral state 
of human beings — their action and re-action upon each 
other. I believe that the more those facts which esta- 
blish that relation and inter-dependence are noted, the 
better ; that the more they are meditated upon, the 
better. And this because the thorough patient observation 
and meditation of them will, I am sure, set right a great 
many crude notions of ours, and will also convince the 
inquirer that his scheme must fail ; that when he has 
got all priests and traditions out of his way, he is only 
beginning the process of clearance which is needful for his 
success ; that he must get the thoughts and convictions 
which have helped most to raise and civilize human 
society out of his way also ; that if he does not, they 
will perplex and torment him continually. And I do tell 
him plainly, and confidently, that, tolerant man as he is 
— honestly tolerant, I have no doubt, and eager to rid 
the earth of* us, because we are intolerant — he will not 
be able to expel an infinite number of religious ex- 
periences, fancies, notions, by medicines allopathic or 
homoeopathic ; he will be obliged to resort to older, 
more tried methods. He must — I would say it to him 
in the lowest whisper — but I must say it, and he and the 
world will find whether I am right — he must persecute. 



218 WHY THEY MUST BE PEESECUTOES. 

The inconvenient consciousnesses, which do not let the 
physical constitution act freely and healthily, will have 
to be prohibited. And since it is not easy to reach 
them by decrees and swords, the expression of them 
must be checked ; because it will be found that they are 
just as infectious as scarlet fever, or small-pox. I do 
not speak these words lightly, or inconsiderately. The 
history of persecution by all sects, governments, churches, 
in all families and neighbourhoods, seems to me most 
clearly to show that it originates with a desire — (often 
an honest desire — it was so in Trajan and Marcus 
Aurelius, when they ordered the deaths of Ignatius and 
Polycarp) — to put down that which is found to interfere 
seriously, either with the quiet of society, or with the 
comfortable working of some system or theory, which 
we have convinced ourselves is salutary and needful for 
human beings. That I think is an account of it which 
includes all cases, the particular motives and influences 
being of course most various. And I cannot understand 
how those who think that there are certain common 
tendencies in all men, call them physical or what you 
please, should suppose themselves free from tlis tendency, 
which experience shows to be so. general; or, at least, 
why the world should suppose them free from it. I rather 
think the danger of their yielding to it is greatly in- 
creased by their apparent conviction that it never can 
assail them. 

I do not, however, dream that warnings of this 



BUTLER. OUR MORAL CONSTITUTION. 219 

kind will deter any one from reducing Mr. Combe's 
theory to practice ; most certainly I do not wish that they 
should hinder any one from giving it the most serious 
consideration. There are some eminent moralists among 
ourselves, formed in the school of Butler, who will be 
inclined to dismiss it rather superciliously, on another 
ground. They will exclaim, ' Why, are Mr. Combe's 
disciples really ignorant that a much closer observer and 
deeper thinker than he is, has been in this field before 
him, and has shown us clearly and satisfactorily that 
there is a moral constitution in which all human beings 
are sharers? Have they never heard that Butler has 
proved social affections to be an integral part of our 
human nature, a far more essential part of it than "the 
senses or the power of locomotion ? Do they not know 
that he has proved self-love and resentment to have a 
moral basis? Have they forgotten the evidence by 
which he has shown that the Conscience is not only 
one of the faculties of our nature, but the lordly, sove- 
reign faculty, to which all owe obedience ? Will any one 
say that the processes by which these positions have 
been demonstrated are less legitimate or less scientific 
than those to which Mr. Combe has had recourse ? ' 

I, at least, feel no temptation to maintain that para- 
dox. I should find it difficult to say how much I honour 
Butler, or how much I owe to his discourses on Human 
Nature. But I cannot help perceiving that there are 
causes which give the exclusive believers in a physical 



220 

constitution — immeasurably inferior as they may be to 
him — a very decided advantage over him. Though 
Physiology may be even yet in its infancy, the physi- 
ologist speaks confidently of some facts and laws which 
he has ascertained. As Butler is commonly interpreted, 
he assumes all moral principles to depend merely on 
probable evidence. Some of his disciples seem to look 
upon that as his most characteristic doctrine. 

Again, there are certain diseases of the body which can 
without any hesitation be traced to certain conditions 
of the atmosphere, which are the effects of bad drainage, 
neglect of ventilation, want of cleanliness ; others, which 
can be directly referred to drunkenness or profligacy. The 
former are positive evils directly curable by physical 
remedies, the latter, which we commonly call moral, 
might be avoided by a man who noticed how much 
of sickness, pain, poverty, they produced. But when 
our social affections and our self-love are diseased, 
it does not appear that Butler has pointed out any 
satisfactory method of setting them right, of restoring 
their healthy activity. He shows that they are meant 
for us, and that they are meant to be in harmony; 
but suppose they are dormant, how are they to be 
awakened? suppose they are in discord, what is to 
reconcile them ? Is it not likely that a man will say, 
' Mr. Combe helps me to a certain extent. He shows 
me some influences which may seriously derange the 
economy of my individual life, and of the world. He 



HIS DOCTEINE OF THE CONSCIENCE. 221 

tells me how I may avoid those influences. Till you 
can give me some aid that is more efficient, I must avail 
myself of his.' The student of Butler's doctrine on the 
Coscience, is often forced even more painfully upon this 
conclusion. For he will say to himself, ' My conscience 
ought, you say, to be a king. But it is not a king. 
It is a captive. How shall it be raised to its throne ? 
And when it has got a temporary ascendency, can I 
trust it ? Does not Butler himself admit the possibility 
of superstition acting upon it, and deranging its de- 
cisions ? Is that a slight exception to a general maxim ? 
Does not all history show that the decrees of this great 
ruler may be made contradictory, monstrous, destructive, 
by this disturbing force, which Butler notices, but hardly 
deigns to take account of? 

And thirdly, it must not be forgotten that so intelli- 
gent and ardent (I dare not say, so excessive) an admirer 
of Butler as Sir James Mackintosh, has complained, that 
while he is bold and clear in asserting the fact of a con- 
science, and its right to dominion, he is timid and hesi- 
tating in affirming what it is, and how its prerogatives 
are to be exercised. Is not this remark strictly true ? Is 
not every practical student of Butler obliged to put the 
question to himself : ' This faculty belongs to my nature, 
then, — What to me ? Is the conscience mine f Do / 
govern it, or does it govern me f ' The school-doctor may 
dismiss this difficulty with great indifference. For the 
living man everything is involved in the answer to it. 



222 THEOLOGY AND MORALITY. 

I have taken Butler as the highest specimen and best 
known representative of a noble class of thinkers and 
writers, to whom I believe we are under the greatest obli- 
gations ; who have bi ought to light truths which we could 
never less afford than now to lose sight of, but who are 
in danger of being utterly supplanted by a race of mere 
physical philosophers, or of mere spiritualists, if we are not 
prepared to examine in what relation they stand to both. 
The great facts to which Butler bore so noble a witness, 
cannot, I think, be explained, while we regard them 
tnerely as facts in man's nature. The more we look 
into them, the more they imply an ascent out of that 
nature, a necessity in man to acknowledge that which 
is above it, that which is above himself. When we 
take in this necessity, as implied in our constitution, 
the difficulties which beset the most full and masterly 
explanation that can be given of these facts, gradually 
disappear. I will endeavour to explain what I mean, 
and to offer one more evidence that Theology is the 
protector and basis of Morality and Humanity. 

The word Kegeneration occupies a prominent place 
in all summaries of Christian Theology. It seems to 
many who hear it, and to many who use it, as if it im- 
ported a principle most inconsistent with that which 
Butler has defended in his Sermons on Human Nature. 
If a man requires to be regenerated, they ask, before he 
can be that which God requires him to be, that upon 
which He looks with approbation, how can human 



regeneration; one meaning of it. 223 

nature in itself be the good thing which Butler would 
have us believe that it is ? Must he not be at variance 
with the Scriptures, at variance with the testimony of 
our hearts, which confess the Scriptures to be true, 
and ourselves to be evil? I am always glad when I 
hear a person who has really a reverence both for our 
great moralist and for the Scriptures, asking this question ; 
it is nearly certain to lead him into a clearer appre- 
hension of both. I am always sorry when I hear a 
person asking it who wishes to prove Butler wrong ; 
it is nearly certain that he will be confirmed in the 
notion that he himself is perfectly right, and that in his 
eagerness not to twist the Bible into conformity with 
Butler's notions he will twist it into conformity with 
his own. 

Regeneration may mean the substitution, in certain 
persons, at some given moment, (say in the ordinance of 
Baptism, or at a crisis called conversion,) of a nature 
specially bestowed upon them, for the one which belongs 
to them as ordinary human beings. No doubt it has this 
meaning for a great many Protestants, as well as Koman- 
ists ; no doubt this meaning mixes with another, in 
some of the purest and noblest hearts to be found in 
either communion. Such a doctrine of regeneration, I 
apprehend, is quite incompatible with the doctrine of 
a moralist, who supposes the human constitution — 
that which belongs to us not as special individuals differ- 
ent from the race, but as members of the race — to be 



224 ANOTHER MEANING OF IT. 

good, and any violations of it and transgressions of it 
to be evil. There is no possibility, so far as I see, of 
bringing these two schemes of thought into reconcili- 
ation ; they are directly, essentially antipathic. For, to 
suppose that they can coexist in any human heart or 
intellect, merely because one has the label ' moral,' and 
the other, ' theological,' is to suppose that heart or intel- 
lect a mere shop or warehouse of opinions, in which no 
living processes are going on, but where goods are kept 
to meet the inconsistent demands of different markets. 

Regeneration may mean the renovation or restitution 
of that which has fallen into decay, the repair of an 
edifice according to the ground-plan and design of the 
original architect. This meaning is in accordance with 
the common usage of language. It is more like the 
sense which either a popular writer or a philologer would 
put upon the word, supposing he did not know that it 
had acquired another. And it is a signification which 
cleaves to the word in the discourses of the most reli- 
gious people ; one which Romanists and Protestants 
adopt consciously in the way of argument, and fall into 
unconsciously in their prayers and exhortations. It is 
obvious that such a signification need not in the least 
contradict Butler's idea of a human constitution, but 
might remarkably illustrate it. There being a certain 
constitution intended for man by His Creator, and cer- 
tain influences about him or within him which weakened 
or undermined it, the author of the work might look 



OBJECTIONS TO THAT MEANING. 225 

lovingly upon it, and devise certain measures for coun- 
teracting those influences, and bringing it forth in its 
fulness and order. Some such theological complement 
of his moral system we may suppose gave coherency 
and satisfaction to the mind of Butler himself. 

But there is a great difficulty in our way, if we seek 
to put this idea of Kegeneration in the place of the one 
which I set forth previously. Such a regeneration may 
be intended for us ; there may be processes leading 
some, even leading the world, towards it ; but are there 
any signs that it has been accomplished ? Is the order, 
in this sense, restored ? Can even good men be said in 
this sense to have recovered what the race had lost? 
Theologians therefore dwell on a restitution or refor- 
mation, or complete renewal of the divine image in 
individuals, as an object of hope. Some of them connect 
with that, a restitution and reformation of the earth and 
the order of human society. But they contend as 
earnestly that there is something already obtained by 
Christ, for those who will receive it. This something, 
they say, is very real ; we are partakers of it now, not 
to be partakers of it in some future ideal state; it is 
the necessary beginning of, and preparation for any such 
state. And the words ' birth ' and ' generation,' which 
they find recurring so continually in Scripture, do, they 
contend, suggest another thought than that which the 
restoration of an edifice suggests. They must indicate 
a life communicated from a Father. A life of this kind 

Q 



226 REGENERATION OF MANKIND IN CHRIST. 

they affirm they have received ; it is renewed every hour ; 
they cannot possibly wait for it till the world recovers its 
primitive glory ; they want it as the pledge that they 
shall not sink into utter debasement. 

Now it has been the object of my former Essays to 
show that every great article in the Church's Creed 
presumes the revelation of a Son of God, as the root of 
righteousness in every human being, as the centre and 
corner stone of humanity itself. Supposing such a 
Person to have been actually revealed — supposing He 
has come, and that we do not look for another, it would 
seem as if the Regeneration of man in the most radical 
sense one can dream of it — in that very sense which the 
etymology of the word indicates, and in which it is 
accepted by those who prize it most — has not been com- 
menced only, but effected, not for a few of us, but for all. 
If it can be said that God has manifested His Son, made 
of a woman, that we might receive the adoption of sons — 
if these words could be preached to men of all kindreds 
and all characters 1,800 years ago, the idea of Regene- 
ration as the restoration of human beings to their true 
filial position in Christ, of mankind to its unity in Him, 
is fulfilled. The sin of man, which consists in the denial 
of his filial relationship to God, of his fraternal relation 
to the members of his own species, is taken away in 
Christ. The constitution of humanity is restored, and 
this is that very constitution involving social affections, 
involving a reverence and love of the man for himself— 



HOW IT EXPLAINS CONSCIENCE. 227 

not as contradictions of each other, but as necessary to 
each other — of which Butler has so finely traced the signs 
and evidences in all the ordinary, and apparently the 
most discordant, facts of human experience. And all 
evil must be, as he represents it, the nonconformity to 
this constitution, the refusal to recognise it, precisely 
as so many mischiefs which befal us have been success- 
fully traced by Mr. Combe and a multitude of others to 
nonconformity with our physical constitution. 

Let us consider, for a moment, whether the practical 
obstacles which I pointed out to the application, even to 
the acceptance of Butler's doctrine, are not avoided when 
it is contemplated under this theological aspect. And 
first, that great and serious objection of his affectionate 
critic, Sir James Mackintosh, is at once explained. The 
name, Conscience, would seem to import, not a power 
which rules in us, but rather our perception and recog- 
nition of some power very near to us, which has a claim 
on our obedience. I think this interpretation of the word 
is fully borne out by the most familiar, and at the same 
time by the most serious and thoughtful usage of it. 
The most conscientious man does not speak of his con- 
science as giving him a law ; he speaks of it as confessing 
a law which he dares not violate. It makes him a sub- 
ject, not a master. No one, I believe, felt this more 
strongly than Butler. Again and again one perceives 
how much it penetrated his whole mind. If the indi- 
vidual conscience undertakes to lay down laws of its 



228 

own, his idea of a human constitution, that is, of a law 
or order for all human beings, is absolutely set at 
nought. And yet he was forced to say, that in our 
nature, conscience is the lordly faculty, the one entitled 
to speak and to be obeyed. Not being permitted by 
the terms he had prescribed for himself, to look out of 
that nature, this was the only possible, the only true 
language. Could he feel otherwise than timid, while he 
resorted to it ? Can any phrase describe more livingly, 
more beautifully, than Mackintosh's, the shrinking of a 
deeply reverent thinker, when he approached an awful 
truth, interwoven with his own being, which the limi- 
tations of his argument — and it must also be admitted 
the habits of his time — did not permit him to grasp, 
scarcely to recognise ? The man is startled like a guilty 
thing surprised, when he discovers how close he is to 
the source of all his light. Why should not the philo- 
sopher tremble with the same human awe ? especially if 
he is in another danger, which is proper to his own 
vocation, that of falling into a conscious contradiction, 
while he is uttering what he knows to be a great truth ? 
Butler was sure the conscience should rule ; yet he was 
sure also that its function was to serve. He felt that it 
appertains to each man ; that it is the very sign of his 
personality ; and yet that if he says, ' It belongs to me,' 
he destroys its power and its witness. Mighty paradoxes ! 
enough to make a devout, serious man — one combining, 
so remarkably as Butler did, intrepidity in the pursuit of 



EFFECTS OF SUPERSTITION. 229 

truth and caution in enunciating it, stammer and turn pale. 
But Thou, strong Son of God ! give Thy servants 
grace with all boldness to speak of Thee as that Lord of 
the inner man, in confessing whom each of us knows 
himself to be a person, knows himself to be a subject ; 
knows that he is meant to rule the turbulent impulses 
and energies within him, because they are Thine, and 
have all been redeemed by Thee, and are all consecrated 
to Thee. Suffer us not to shrink through any shame, 
or through the desire of being reputed philosophical 
among philosophical men, or religious among religious 
men, from making this confession of Thee, seeing that 
Thou, who didst raise up men in other generations to 
speak that which was needful for them, hast mercifully 
awakened some of us to feel, that only in this way can 
we be saved from sinking into the deepest pit of unbelief, 
the most practical denial of that conscience, which, yet 
not a few are ready to put in the place of Thee. 

If that prayer were sincerely offered, I cannot help 
thinking that Butler's honest admission respecting the 
possible effects of superstition in perverting the decrees of 
the conscience might no longer be fatal to his principle. 
Till the true Lord of the conscience has made Himself 
known to it, of necessity it must go about seeking rest 
and finding none. Every false king will assume domi- 
nion over it ; as it bows to the impostor it will become 
beclouded in all its judgments ; the more it tries to 
regulate its' vassals, the more mischief it will do them, 



230 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH. 

the more cruel they will feel its tyranny. It may pre- 
scribe those very outrages on physical rules, which I 
said would oblige the disciples of Mr. Combe to coerce 
it. It may prescribe outrages on the social affections, 
and so may drive the disciple of Butler, with all his 
reverence for its authority, to coerce it. Butler con- 
fesses the necessity ; the appeals which he makes to our 
fears when he most desires to convince us that we have, 
in ourselves, a love of right for. its own sake, are an 
acknowledgment of it. But if we believe that Christ is 
the ruler of this conscience, how beautifully that dis- 
tinction of St. Paul, between the flesh and the spirit, to 
which I alluded in my last Essay, would interpret the 
mystery of His divine government; what a solid basis 
would it lay for ethics and practical education ! All the 
actual punishments which overtake wrong doing, all the 
fears of punishment which visit the wrong doer, are 
needful for that evil nature in us, which is always 
seeking to break loose from law, and which would 
reduce us into beasts. But the Christ, the true bride- 
groom of man's spirit, is ever drawing it towards Him- 
self — is holding out to it freedom from evil, and the 
knowledge of Himself as its high reward. Owning 
Him, the man rises out of dark superstitions, out of 
immoral practices ; he recognises the fitness of all 
God's arrangements in the physical and moral world ; 
he claims for the body as well as the soul a redemp- 
tion from all which corrupts and degrades it! 



SELF-LOVE AND SOCIAL. 231 

The full bearing of the principle that Christ is the 
regenerator of humanity, upon Butler's view of the 
human constitution, is not however understood till we 
have tried to apply his doctrine that we are essentially 
social beings, just as much as we are individuals. I say, 
to apply it ; for nothing is easier than to state the maxim ; 
it may sound to us like the veriest common-place. But 
when we have tried, in any particular case, to ' bid 
self-love and social be the same,' we have, probably, 
found that we could utter that command, just as we 
could call spirits from the vasty deep ; but that self-love 
and social did not do as they were bid, any more than 
the spirits came when they were called. The theoretical 
common-place then became the hardest of all practical 
paradoxes : and yet in its very difficulty there lay the 
strongest witness of its truth. I am certain that I have 
no self that I can love — nay, that self must be an object 
of intense torment and hatred to me, unless I am the 
member of a body. I am certain that I cannot be the 
member of a body consisting of persons, unless I am 
myself a person; that I cannot love another person 
unless I do also love myself. Bring in the belief of the 
one Head and Brother of each man, the one Centre of 
society, and that great moral contradiction is felt to be 
the great moral necessity ; one which we can welcome 
and rejoice in, and act upon. 

This consideration leads us to that which is most 
specific in the Christian doctrine of [Regeneration as 



232 REGENERATION SOCIAL. 

distinguished from the doctrine of Justification, of which 
I spoke in the last Essay. However many disputes there 
may have been on the subject of Regeneration, no one 
has doubted that it had something to do with Society. 
Phrases have been used by all parties, which seem to 
imply, that it is simply an operation on the individual ; 
but again, all parties have spoken of reception into a 
body as being the effect of this operation, if not the very 
essence of it. Those who say that Baptism only admits 
into an outward visible Society, say therefore, that 
Eegeneration in its fullest and most real sense cannot be 
connected with baptism : when the man becomes really 
a member of Christ's body, they call him regenerate. 
This we may take, therefore, as the common, recognised 
faith of Christendom ; that which has grown naturally 
out of the words in the third chapter of St. John, that 
' Except a man be born from above, he cannot enter into 
the kingdom of God. or see the kingdom of God ; ' for 
entering into or seeing a kingdom, is surely there de- 
scribed as the blessing of the divine birth. 

' But though there may be this single point of agree- 
ment amongst Christian doctors on this subject, are 
there not the greatest disagreements among them ; such 
disagreements as entirely bear out Mr. Combe's assertion 
that nothing is settled about the moral or spiritual con- 
stitution, while he is able to argue from the most certain 
data respecting the physical ? ' Before I answer this 
question, I wish to inquire what those data are, from 



CERTAINTY IN PHYSICS. 233 

which Mr. Combe argues, and what is his method of 
coming at conclusions from them. These data, I con- 
ceive, are certain facts respecting the condition of men 
in different circumstances; respecting their states of 
health and of disease ; respecting the treatment, mis- 
chievous and beneficial, which has been applied to them. 
Such facts have not been merely observed, loosely and 
carelessly : they have been submitted to a series of search- 
ing experiments. There have been experiments on the 
bodily frame which illustrated those on the influences to 
which it is exposed ; the anatomist, physiologist, chemist, 
geologist, each contributing his quota of observation and 
thought, to the confirmation or correction of the other. 
Thus, after many theories have been accepted, and thrown 
aside, some simple law has been brought to light, the 
great test of which has been, its power of explaining 
facts, new and old ; so far as it can do that, it sustains 
its character ; when it fails, it is not discarded, but it is 
supposed that some deeper, more comprehensive law is 
yet to reward the toil and humility of the inquirer. 
What can be better or truer than investigations of this 
kind ? What duty can be greater, than to avail ourselves 
of the results to which they lead ? But the more we 
study them and admire them, the less shall we adopt 
those loose expressions which represent this evidence as 
something altogether different in kind from that which 
is open to moralists and divines, if they like to make 
use of it. I do not believe that Butler intended to dis- 



234 butlee's peobable evidence. 

tinguish the probable evidence to wliicli he appeals in his 
Analogy, from this kind of induction. On the contrary, 
he is applying the inductive method with the same hesita- 
tion and unwillingness to accept hasty generalizations with 
the same readiness to look at facts and test them, which 
characterises the physical inquirer. And he wished his 
reader to feel how satisfactory that method was, what a 
guide it was to practical decisions, what a deliverance 
from mere vague hypotheses. He did, however, use words 
addressed to the loose thinkers of his day, the men of 
wit and fashion about town, which seem to confound 
' probabilities ' with ' chances ; ' to suggest the thought 
that we are to calculate the likelihood of religious prin- 
ciples being true, and that if there is even a slight 
balance in favour of them — nay, none at all — we are to 
throw in the danger of rejecting them as a makeweight, 
and so to force ourselves into the adoption of them. I 
groan over these words as I read them, feeling how 
much a great and good man was sacrificing of what was 
dearest to his heart, for the sake of an argumentum ad 
hominem, which, after all, was not an argument that 
ever reached the conscience of any man, or that could do 
so, if the conscience is what Butler affirms it to be. But 
I have groaned more deeply when I have seen these 
passages culled out by persons of great acuteness — but 
acuteness cultivated in an Aristotelian, not a Baconian 
school — and used, first, as a representation of the whole 
plan and purpose of Butler ; secondly, as the basis of a 



INFERENCES FEOM IT. 235 

theory which was to save English divines from the 
necessity of demanding either the dogmatical certainty 
which Rome promises to her children, or the scientific 
certainty which Protestants seem to be craving for. 
Thanks be to God, that house of cards has fallen down ! 
The ingenious architect has, himself, undertaken to ex- 
pose its instability.* How much better for him that he 
should be seeking even such a temporary standing-ground 
— sandy and shifting as I believe it to be — as Borne 
can afford him, till he finds an eternal rock, neither of 
authority nor of probabilities, on which he and the Church 
may rest — nay, how much better that one in whose heart 
there is, I am convinced, a real, even a passionate love 
of Truth, should pass through all imaginable subtleties, 
distortions, impostures of the intellect, in his way to it, 
than that he should be content with a scheme which 
shuts out Truth from men as an unattainable, scarcely 
desirable, treasure ! How much better for us that we 
should incur the bitterest hatred and scorn, expressed 
with the most admirable cleverness and wit, of one who 
I yet doubt not is capable of all generous affections, 
than that we should be saddled with a theory which was 
leading numbers of young men to think that the main, 



* Compare Father Newman's book on " Romanism and Popular 
Protestantism," with the masterly demolition of his theory of proba- 
bilities in his " Theory of Development." See also Mr. Manning's Ser- 
mon on " This is Life Eternal," (I may allude to his treatment of the 
text hereafter,) in which he again slays the slain ; assuming of course 
the doctrine of Chances to be the doctrine of our Church. 



236 HOW PEESUMPTIONS BECOME CEETAIN. 

perhaps the only reason for believing in a God is, 
that if there should happen to be one, He might send 
them to hell for denying His existence! I am sure 
that the thought of tempting any to such an opinion 
would have been horrible to this writer at all times ; I 
have dared to put it into words, that it may awaken 
horror in the minds of those who are left among us, and 
may lead them to reflect on the infinite peril of resorting 
to plausible arguments for Faith, which may prove to 
be hiding-places for Atheism. I return to Butler. 

Suppose the strong presumptions in favour of a moral 
constitution for man, which he discovered in experience 
and history, were met by the announcement of a Reve- 
lation — how would they be affected ? Would the Aaron 
rod swallow up the other rods ? Would the light which 
is said to come from Heaven, establish its claim to be 
that, by putting out all former lights ? I apprehend that 
proof would be decisive against its pretensions. If a veil 
is withdrawn, it is that what is discovered to me may 
show everything with which I was conversant already, 
everything which was vague and indistinct, in its defi- 
nite form and in its proper colouring. If that which was 
a presumption before — a presumption which I could not 
disown without disowning all my own most satisfactory 
processes of thought and judgment, but yet which I 
did not dare to pronounce certain, because I was afraid 
lest some idiosyncracy of my mind should, in spite of all 
my watchfulness, have mixed itself with these processes, 



TEST OF TRUTH, 237 

and falsified the result — becomes clothed with a new 
force, illuminated with a new brightness ; if it comes 
back to me, stripped of all that was merely my own, 
and yet I recognise it as more mine than ever — I clo not 
know what the reason can ask for besides, to quiet it, 
and satisfy it. That, and more, than that, I think the 
belief of Christ as the regenerator of humanity does 
for all the questionings and demands of human suffering 
beings ; that and more than that, for the speculations 
of the faithful moral student who has been painfully 
tracing the vestiges of an order and constitution in the 
thoughts and doings of himself and his fellow-creatures. 

What I say is to be tested by life, and cannot 
be proved by words. But since Mr. Combe and his 
followers are rightly and naturally disturbed by the 
discords and contradictions of Christian divines, — by 
their practical contradictions even more than their 
speculative, the evil acts and courses which have seemed 
to follow from their dogmas and their eagerness to en- 
force them, — I shall draw the evidence I produce from 
this source ; I shall maintain that these can be distinctly 
traced to the unbelief of Christians in the fact that 
Christ is the regenerator of man; that this faith, had 
they maintained it, must have made their conduct and 
their influence on society very different from what they 
have actually been. 

1. It may sound like the strangest of all charges 
against Eomanists to say that they have undervalued 



238 THE CHUECH DENYING ITS OWN POSITION. 

the Church; that they have thought meanly of it 
in relation to God and to man, of its work and of 
its powers. But I do believe that that is the very 
charge which we have most right to bring against both 
Latins and Greeks ; it is for this sin, I hold, that they 
have been called, and will be called, to give account 
before the tribunal of Him who has committed to them, 
their stewardship, and before those for whose use they 
have received it. Do you say, ' They have done their 
very utmost to exalt the Church ; they have boasted of 
it as divine ; they have said that there was nothing in 
earth or heaven that it could not bind and loose ; they 
have, till men became too enlightened to believe them, 
reduced their doctrine to practice, and made the priest 
the ruler over the spirits, souls, bodies of men?' Even 
so ; your words are true ; they establish my posi- 
tion. The Apostles, instead of doing their utmost to 
exalt the Church, did nothing. They spoke of the 
Church as being in God the Father and in Jesus 
Christ; they told those who belonged to it that they 
were created and redeemed in Christ Jesus, and called ; 
they bade them remember that they had no worth or 
greatness of their own ; they said that they were to be 
witnesses to all men of the redemption which had been 
wrought out for them by the love of God, through the 
sacrifice of Christ ; they said that in proportion as they 
renounced idols, and devil worship, and parties, and 
claimed the dignity of spiritual creations, and acted as 



THE PEOCESS OF DENIAL. 239 

if they were sons of God and members one of another, 
they would be such witnesses. How could men who 
had this position make one for themselves ? What had 
men who could exercise such a mighty power over the 
world to do with asserting or vaunting of it ? No Jew 
or heathen believed that they had it ; but they believed 
it, and acted as if they did. When the Church's faith 
in its divine birth, in its regenerate position, in God's 
calling, was growing weak, then it must begin to say 
how very divine it is. When it no longer understands 
itself to be in Christ, to be by its very nature and con- 
stitution spiritual, it must begin to assert that a certain 
mysterious spirituality had been conferred upon it, apart 
from Christ ; it must suppose that He had delegated His 
functions to those who should have been the witnesses 
that He was continually and in person exercising them ; 
at last the notion must be adopted, and be regarded as 
necessary to the unity of the Church, that one person 
was representing Him in His absence, was His com- 
missioned vicar. 

Every pretension of the Church, which has been 
felt as tyrannical and intolerable by the inward con- 
science and reason of mankind, has arisen from this 
low* and imperfect view of its own position. It must 
force men's assent to opinions, because it did not believe 
that it had power to elevate them into a knowledge of 
the Truth ; it must hold down human thoughts and 
energies, because it did not believe that it had a com- 



240 POWERS AND WORK OF THE CHURCH. 

mission to awaken and emancipate them ; it must be 
the worst of all civil rulers, the most miserable of police- 
men, the most despicable of intriguers, because it did 
not feel that the God of Truth was with it ; that it 
might make men citizens of His kingdom ; might raise 
them out of the inner corruptions, the evil results 
of which troubled the civil ruler — demanded the aid of 
the policeman; that it might deliver people and their 
rulers from the habit of lying one to another. 

But the Church has done— all honest modern histo- 
rians, infidel as well as Protestant, confess it — other 
works than these. However strange it may be to say 
that, having committed all these abominations, she has 
yet been a civilizer and educator of human beings ; has 
given a new principle to society; has helped, at least, 
to break the chains of the serf; has made the new world 
quite unlike the old; this has been said, and must 
be said. Those who cannot bear the inconsistency, can- 
not bear history. If they want it to utter either fact 
without the other, they must write it afresh ; it is not 
what God has written. Both facts must be explained 
in some way. If I find that men acting in the faith of 
God having redeemed and regenerated the world in 
Christ, and thinking themselves called as churchmen 
to proclaim that fact and bear testimony to it by their 
lives, have been the great instruments of all good to the 
world, and if I find that men — (possibly the very same 
men at some other period of their lives, or at the very 



CIVIL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 241 

period) have been acting on the opposite hypothesis, 
behaving as if it was their business to make human 
beings something else than God has made them, and so 
have produced all manner of mischief and confusion ; I 
think I have a right to say, that my explanation of it is 
not altogether unreasonable. 

2. But Protestants have said — Englishmen especially 
have said with great energy : — The habit of magnifying 
the Church, which Romanists, and Greeks also though 
not perhaps in an equal degree, have indulged in, has 
been utterly injurious to ordinary morality and human 
life, because the state and civil order, and ultimately, 
domestic order, have been disparaged, for the sake 
of glorifying it ; for the sake of maintaining a cer- 
tain spiritual or ideal life, which is supposed to be 
the most truly Christian. Undoubtedly all this has 
happened ; the complaint has the best possible founda- 
tion. And why has this been so ? Because Romanists 
and Greeks, whatever they have professed, have not 
believed that Christ came into the world to regenerate 
all human society, all the forms of life — all civil 
order, all domestic relationships; — because they have 
not really confessed that, when He took human flesh, 
and ate common food, and sat at the marriage feast, 
He declared all these to be connected with Him, to 
have a divine, eternal, spiritual basis, and not to lose 
that character because they are connected with the 
earth and the body. A secret Manicheeism has been 



242 HOW TO SECURE HONOUR FOR THEM : 

infecting the practice of the Church, while she has de- 
nounced the heresy in terms ; and that Manicheeism has 
gained strength, and must gain strength every hour, till 
the idea of a regenerated humanity supersedes and ex- 
tinguishes it. You may try other expedients, and you 
will try them in vain. The office of the magistrate will 
be scorned as secular, marriage will not be held to be 
honourable nor the bed undefiled, till neither king, 
father, mother, wife nor child, are loved more than 
Christ, till all are honoured and loved, because He is 
acknowledged as the bond of our union to them. What, 
then, are Protestants doing to maintain that which it is 
the peculiar glory of Protestantism to maintain, when 
they deny the renewal and regeneration of society in 
Christ; when they insist that we may not claim for 
our children the glory and privilege of the new birth, 
of being members of Christ ; that this is the special 
distinction of a few persons who have been brought to 
know that they possess it ? How can they defend the 
honour of kinghood or fatherhood, or of conjugal life, 
against Romanists, while they surrender their true posi- 
tion for so feeble a one ? 

3. And thus I am brought back to Mr. Combe and 
the Physical Constitution of Man. * That has been 
very often disparaged by churchmen; the body has 
been spoken of contemptuously by them; health and 
cleanliness have been treated as vulgar things.' As- 
suredly ; to our shame be it spoken ; it has been even 



AND FOR THE BODY AND THE EARTH. 243 

so. And why ? Because we have forgotten that Christ 
took a human body, and spent the greater part of His time 
on earth in healing the sicknesses of it : because we 
have not confessed that the body and the earth are as 
much redeemed and regenerated by Him as our spirits, 
or intellectual powers ; because we have not confessed 
the meaning and power of the Resurrection. A man 
who fully believes in Christ's Regeneration, must regard 
every physical study as a sacred study, physiology as 
the most sacred of all ; must desire that they should be 
pursued manfully and fearlessly, with no other check 
than that which every true student voluntarily sub- 
mits to — the check upon his own pride and impatience ; 
that restraint, which tends to the highest freedom, 
which every scientific man covets, that he may be a 
true discoverer of God's laws, and a benefactor to his 
brethren. We ought to feel that all God's judgments 
by fever and cholera, are judgments for neglect of His 
physical laws, but that they will not be obeyed till 
men obey His moral laws, by ceasing to live to them- 
selves, by feeling that it is their business to care for 
their fellows and for the earth. 

4. An able and benevolent man has complained that 
we have been talking and arguing about Baptismal 
Regeneration, while our brethren of the working classes 
are discussing the question, whether there is a God. 
He means to intimate that we know next to nothing of 
what is going on in their minds, that we are quarrelling 



244 THE YVOKKING CLASSES 

about our technicalities, while they are occupied with 
first principles. I feel the truth of much of the charge, 
and desire to take it home to myself. There is a sad 
chasm between us and them ; the cause is all too well 
indicated by this remonstrance. But I cannot admit 
that we are discussing theological technicalities, when 
we are talking about Regeneration ; I believe we are 
discussing the most radical principle of human life. I 
cannot admit that the working classes are strangers to 
the word Regeneration, or to controversies about it ; it is 
one of their favourite words ; they are continually think- 
ing about plans of social regeneration. I cannot believe, 
finally, that they will ever come to the settlement of 
that great primary question, whether they have a God 
to believe in and worship, till they are taught whether 
He has done anything, or is doing anything, for their 
regeneration. 

Our fault, I conceive, is, not that we have spoken 
too much on this -great subject, not that we have been 
too earnest in asserting that God has regenerated us, 
and has given us a simple sign and pledge that He has 
done so ; but, that we have not made the people under- 
stand, because we have not understood ourselves, that 
we were needing such a Regeneration as they want and 
feel that they want, — a social as well as an individual 
Regeneration. If we did see our way to tell them this ; 
to explain that we regard Christ as the Restorer of Hu- 
manity to its true and proper condition ; as the King of 



INTERESTED IN THIS DOCTRINE. 245 

kings, and Lord of lords; as the Head and "bond of 
a universal brotherhood ; as the righteous Judge and 
Punisher of all that violate their relations to each other, 
and set up self in opposition to society; I think we 
might, in time, bring some of them to feel that the 
Church was their friend and deliverer, not as they now, 
with great excuse, consider it, the bitterest of their 
foes. 

Let any one, however, who shall determine to speak 
and act on this principle fully count the cost, and deter- 
mine with himself whether he is ready to incur it. Let 
him be sure that he must offend all parties, without a 
single exception. He is a silly dreamer, if he fancies 
that he shall conciliate High Churchmen because he 
defends Baptismal Regeneration, or Low Churchmen 
because he says that faith in Christ as the Redeemer 
and Regenerator, is the ground of all right Christian 
action. He must offend priests, monarchs, nobles, for he 
must tell them they have sinned against Christ, who has 
appointed them to take care of His sheep. He must 
offend those who denounce priests, monarchs, and nobles, 
because he recognises their appointment, and does not 
conceive that the Church, being a brotherhood, is there- 
fore a democracy. He will displease those who say 
that you must reform the individual before you reform 
society, for he declares that Christ is the Reformer of 
both, and that the individual who claims any relation to 
Him, must own himself the member of a society. He 



246 WHAT WILL COME TO THOSE WHO TEACH IT. 

must displease those who talk of reforming Society, as 
the only way of reforming the individual, because they 
understand by the reformation of society, the alteration 
of its circumstances, not the assertion of a spiritual root 
and ground of it. He must count upon the hostility 
of those who wish to keep things as they are, and who 
dread change lest the whole social fabric should fall to 
pieces, because he is certain that it will fall to pieces, 
unless Christ, who sacrificed Himself, is acknowledged 
as its foundation, and unless all maxims and practices, 
religious, political, commercial, which assume another and 
contrary foundation to this, are abjured and cast aside as 
anti-social, immoral, destructive. He must count upon 
the active opposition, or profound contempt, of the whole 
new school of philosophers and reformers, because their 
greeting to each other is, ' Christ is not risen;' their 
message to the tyrants and wrong-doers of the earth is, 
• You need not fear the wrath of Him that sitteth upon 
the throne, or of the Lamb ; ' their gospel to the pri- 
soners in Neapolitan or Roman dungeons, ' The deliverer 
of captives has not come ; it is a figment of the priests, 
that there is such a one.' Whereas, his only hope of 
that which shall be, lies in his acknowledgment of that 
which has been and is. His assurance that the bands 
of death and hell have been loosed, is his only ground 
for confidence that they will be loosed ; his certainty that 
Christ is the Judge of the earth is his only reason for be- 
lieving that it will be one day purged of all its oppressors ; 



UNITAEIAN POLITICS. 247 

his trust that the King has actually been one of the 
sufferers, and the chief of them, is his warrant for declar- 
ing that the earth shall not cover the blood of any of her 
slain, — that what has been done of good or evil to the 
least of Christ's brethren, has been done to Him. 

I cannot tell what amount of sympathy has been ex- 
pressed by Unitarians generally with Mr. Combe's doc- 
trines, but I should imagine that one class of Unitarians, 
being sincerely philanthropical, and more or less strongly 
inclined to materialism, must be very favourable to them. 
I have no arguments to urge upon them in reference to 
these doctrines besides those which I have addressed to 
my countrymen generally. Some of them, I know, are 
admirers of Butler, and regard his doctrine of human 
nature as a valuable counteraction to our favourite theo- 
logical dogmas, — to that especially which they under- 
stand us to associate with the word Kegeneration. If I 
have succeeded in showing that this dogma, interpreted 
not according to some peculiar theory of mine, but in the 
way most, consistent with the profession of Churchmen, 
explains Butler's moral constitution, and proves that we 
need not reject it because we do all honour to Physics, 
I shall at least prepare their minds (and this is all I 
desire) for a calmer and less prejudiced consideration of 
the whole subject. 

As men earnestly interested in politics, I also claim 
their attention. They will see, I trust, that a clergyman 
may concern himself with politics, not merely as they 



248 

bear upon the interests of his order, not merely as they 
contribute to make the office of the priest, more ho- 
noured, either on civil or ecclesiastical grounds. And 
this not because he thinks meanly of his order, or enter- 
tains any theories about a universal priesthood which 
interfere with the acknowledgment of individual priests ; 
but because he counts it a most degrading thing for a 
priest to assert his powers instead of using them, and 
because he believes those powers must be used sinfully 
and shamefully, if they interfere with those which are 
committed to any other functionary, and if they do not 
promote the moral and civil freedom of the community in 
which they are exerted. The elder Unitarians are, I 
believe, commonly Whigs. And so far as Whiggism im- 
plies the recognition of a constitution for each particular 
nation, the principles and forms of which are adapted 
to the character and circumstances of its inhabitants, 
and are brought to light through its history, I heartily 
sympathise with them, and would only suggest that in 
our day we can scarcely understand or defend such 
particular constitutions, unless we are willing to inquire 
whether there is a constitution for mankind, — one which 
does not destroy, as so many universal constitutions 
that men dream of do, but upholds, the order of each 
country and each family. But if by Whiggism they 
mean merely a compromise between the past and the 
present, between order and freedom, I who hold that 
a faithful care of the treasures of the past ensures the 



RADICALISM ; ITS TEUTH. 249 

brightest hopes for the ages to come ; that there cannot 
be an excess of order or of freedom ; must part company 
with them as wholly unsatisfactory teachers, from whom 
no practical good can be obtained, and betake myself to 
some of the younger men of the sect who, I suppose, 
would prefer the name of Kadicals. 

That name, too, I hold in sincere reverence, and wish 
that I were worthy to claim it. I fear we have none of 
us been radical enough, that we have all been too con- 
tent with superficial changes, not demanding a full and 
thorough reformation. After thinking with some ear- 
nestness how that may be attained for us in England 
and for men everywhere, I have come to the conclusion 
which this Essay expresses. I hinted at it when I 
begged the new school of Unitarians to tell me plainly 
what kind of a Church it is which they look for in the 
future ; — whether it has anything to do with that which 
has existed in the world for eighteen centuries ; whether 
He who is declared in our Creeds to be the Corner-stone 
of that, is also to be the Corner-stone of this. I press 
the inquiry again, now that I have told them my mind 
frankly upon it. I will add this only : that if I accepted 
the doctrine of some of those with whom they are asso- 
ciated, and whom they sometimes proclaim to be the 
heralds of a new dispensation, — if I thought that the 
world which is to arise out of the wreck of that in 
which we are living, were one of which some other 



250 CONCLUSION. 

than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was to be the king, 
I should have no more fervent wish, if I could then form 
a wish, — I could conceive no better prayer, if there was 
any one to whom I could offer a prayer, than that I and 
my fellow-men, and the whole universe, might perish at 
once, and for ever. 



ESSAY XI. 

ON THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. 

It is a favourite practice among some writers and 
thinkers of our day, to contrast the vulgar, low-minded, 
animal Jew, with the refined, imaginative, spiritual 
Greek. The comparison is dwelt on especially by those 
who wish to deliver us from what we have been used to 
call the facts, from what they call the legends, of the 
New Testament. All these, they say, had always an 
ideal truth for the old Greeks, and furnished them with 
the hints of a thousand beautiful stories. The hard, 
definite forms in which they have obtained currency 
throughout Christendom, they owe, we are told, to the 
intellects of a few Galileans, below even the average of 
their countrymen in cultivation, beyond them in coarse- 
ness and superstition. 

This charge applies more or less directly to all the 
records of our Lord's life in the Evangelists ; to all the 
articles of the Creed which I have been considering in 
my recent Essays. But it bears most strongly upon 



252 THE GREEK AND THE JEW. 

the words, " He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on 
the right hand of God the Father Almighty." * Here,' 
it is said, ' we have a great idea sensualised and mate- 
' rialised. Humanity is continually longing and striving 
' to ascend above itself. There is always a mysterious 
' heaven, which it desires to reach. Ever and anon 
' it feels that it has actually gained a vision of the 

* Infinite, towards which it aspires. The Greeks, pos- 
1 sessing the creative faculty, had various modes of 
' expressing this truth. The people rejoiced in the 
' symbols ; the wise men, indifferent to them, perceived 
' that which w r as latent in them. The poor Jew could 
1 think only of an actual body ascending into some 
' actual Heaven. The Christian Church, unable to divest 
' itself of the same dry habit of mind, has accepted the 
i Jewish dogma. But she has felt the restraint which 
1 it imposes. The notion of a present Christ alternates 

* in her teachings with that of One who has gone 
' away. The doctrine of Transubstantiation has repre- 
' sented and perpetuated the contradiction. Protestants 
' have tried to rid themselves of it. They will not do 
' so,' these teachers continue, ' till they are content to 
' receive the kernel without the shell, to take the idea 
' of the Ascension, and to cast away the story of it.' 

I have ventured already to encounter the idealists 
in some of their favourite positions ; I can have no 
wish to shrink from a fair examination of these. I 
should be taking a very strange course if I denied that 



THE IGNORANT GALILEANS. 253 

the Galileans were the most ignorant part of a race 
which was specially inclined to animal worship, which 
had exhibited that tendency throughout all its history. 
The Scriptures tell us so ; as I accept their testimony, I 
must believe that it was so. Nor can I make any ex- 
ception in favour of the fishermen, from whom our Lord 
chose His Apostles. If I did, I should contradict their 
own repeated statements. ISTo doubt they were immea- 
surably less imaginative than the Greeks, very little 
able to conceive of a world beyond the range of their 
senses, or to people it with bright forms. Not only 
had they little natural capacity for this kind of crea- 
tion ; it was restrained in them by laws, institutions, 
traditions. They were told that the Lord God, the 
Creator of heaven and earth, had chosen their fathers 
to know Him, and to spread abroad the knowledge of 
Him. They were told that they must not think of 
Him as being like anything in heaven, or earth, or 
under the earth. They had a great hankering to do so. 
It was very, hard to help such thoughts. ■ What could 
He be like if He were not like some of these things ? 
From time to time they were ready to fancy Him like 
the meanest of them ; foreigners might suggest that He 
was like the worthiest, like a man : they were not in- 
sensible to the suggestion ; still they clung to the law of 
their fathers. 

Were they never to have any knowledge of this 
Being except what they got from their books and their 



254 THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

traditions? How strange and sad it was to read the 
books, to hear the traditions, if that was the case ! For 
all whose stories were related to them had spoken of 
actually knowing His name for themselves, of taking 
refuge in Him, of delighting in Him, of finding Him a 
high tower from the face of their enemies. Was all 
this changed ? Was He removed to an infinite distance 
from them, — He who had seemed to promise that the 
ages to come should know Him better than those to 
whom He spoke; who had encouraged the fathers to 
hope that they should leave a richer legacy to their 
children than any that had come to them, and that it 
would go on increasing for their heirs ? 

At times they felt that this could not be; at times 
they knew that it could not be. What times were 
these ? Were they hours of some special freedom from 
their ordinary cares and dulness, when the peasant was 
for an instant transfigured by the sight of some glorious 
sunset, when the fisherman looked into another world 
below the lake, and heard voices tempting him to come 
down and behold its wonders ? No ! it was not then ; 
it was in hours of special toil, sickness, oppression ; it 
was when the child or the friend was taken away ; it 
was when sorrow for the past, doubt in the present, 
terror of the future, were griping them fast ; it was then 
that the conviction dawned upon them, ' He still is ; ' 
' He may be known by us.' ' We may find in Him a 
refuge, even as David or Isaiah did.' And then they 



THEIR TEACHERS; THE TEACHER. 255 

perceived how it was that He must he known, if the 
knowledge was to do them any good, to bring them 
any comfort; that their hearts, not their eyes, were 
crying out for the living God ; that with their hearts 
they must perceive Him, if they were ever to throw off 
their burden and enter into rest. 

It was but for a little while they retained that confi- 
dence, and that clear understanding ; they tried, perhaps, 
to keep both alive, by asking aid and instruction from 
some scribe or doctor of the law. He might give them 
words which would sink into their memories and their 
hearts, to come up again at some other day ; he might 
give them rules which would bind them with heavy 
chains, from which afterwards they would struggle in 
vain to break loose, because they were rules for fitting 
them to seek that intercourse, which they needed that 
they might be fit for it ; or rules which bound them 
to those earthly things and those shameful recollections, 
from which they wanted to be set free. 

But at last there came a Teacher, not removed from 
them like the Rabbis, a peasant, even as they were, — 
One who had grown up in their villages and walked 
about in their cities, — One who went into all companies, 
but who seemed to care for no society so much as 
theirs. And He spoke to them as one having authority. 
He did not tell them of a God, who had been in 
other days, with whom it was possible for Moses and 
the prophets to hold converse. He spoke to them of a 



256 HIS METHOD. 

Father who knew them, the fishermen of Galilee, and 
whom they might know. He spoke of having come 
forth from Him. He spoke of His kingdom as the 
Kingdom of Heaven, and yet as one in which they, the 
meanest sons of earth, could dwell, the secrets of which 
they might understand, the powers of which they might 
exert, which they were to assure their own countrymen 
was at hand, the gates of which they would ultimately 
open to the world. As He interpreted to them the 
nature of this kingdom, they more and more felt that He 
was drawing them from a world which they looked upon 
with their eyes, into an unseen world which another 
eye that He was opening must take in ; yet a world which 
was intimately united to the one they were walking in, 
which gave the forms of that world a distinctness they 
had never had before. When He wielded the powers of 
His kingdom, they felt more and more that He governed 
the secret heart of nature and of man ; that spirits were 
subject to Him ; that through them He was acting upon 
bodies ; that all His influences proceeded from within, 
though at last they left the clearest marks upon that 
which was visible and outward. It was strange how 
they were continually striving against this education, 
trying to invert it, translating His words and acts of 
power into some low, material, ineffectual sense. But 
it was stranger still how this teaching met all their 
thoughts and anticipations, in spite of this opposition ; 
how natural it seemed to be, how exactly framed and 



PROTECTION AGAINST IDOLATRY. 257 

devised for thern ; how it harmonized with all they had 
heard in their Scriptures of a righteous and invisible 
God, who cared for His creatures, and desired that they 
should seek Him and find Him ; how it raised them 
above those animal inclinations of theirs ; what a new 
feeling of humanity it kindled in them ! But the 
Teacher Himself ; what was He ? Might not He who 
was leading them out of all visible idolatry Himself 
become the object of it ? Could they help regarding Him 
with such a reverence as interfered with the reverence 
for Jehovah? Did not the Pharisees continually re- 
proach them with this sin, and Him with encouraging it ? 
There was this danger. What was He doing to deliver 
them from it ? When Simon Peter said, l Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God,' He said, ' Blessed art 
thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not re- 
vealed it to thee, but my Father in heaven.' When 
Simon Peter said, ' That be far from Thee, Lord,' 
that Thou shouldst be rejected of the chief priests and 
scribes, and be put to death, He said, ' Get thee behind 
me, Satan ; thou savourest not the things that be of God, 
but the things that be of men.' For a moment He was 
transfigured before them, and His face became bright and 
glistening ; then a cloud covered Him, and a voice came 
out of the cloud, ' This is my beloved Son ; hear Him ;' 
and He began to speak of His Passion, and, He came 
down into the crowd about the boy who had fits. Thus 
a sense of inward glory belonging to Him, which spirit 

S 



258 THE PASSOVER NIGHT. 

might apprehend, but the eye could not, was awakened in 
them ; while they saw Him crushing and humbling all that 
they looked upon, all that they could make an excuse for 
idolatry. And at last the humiliation became complete. 
They saw Him in agony. The Jewish law sentenced 
Him as a blasphemer. The Gentile ruler gave Him up as 
an impostor, who pretended to the crown and the purple. 
He was not stoned, but crucified. Whatever could put 
contempt upon a Son of God, or a King, was poured upon 
Him. The night before His passion He spoke words, so 
St. John tells us, which the Apostles could not at all 
interpret. ' For a little while,' He said, * they should see 
Him, and then a little while, and they should not see 
Him, because He went to His Father.' ' What is this,' 
they said to themselves, ' which He saith, a little while ? 
We cannot tell what He saith.' And then when He saw 
they were desirous to ask Him, He spoke of a day of 
bliss to them, which should succeed a night of sorrow ; a 
day when they should feel like the woman who remem- 
bers no more the anguish of travail, for joy that a man 
is born into the world. That same night, we are told, He 
took bread and blessed it, and gave it to His disciples, 
and said, ' Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for 
you;' and poured out wine, and said, ' Drink ye all of 
this ; for this is my blood, the blood of the New Testament, 
which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of 
sins.' What such words signified, they knew not, and 
could not know. His body was there ; within a few 



PREPARATION FOR THE ASCENSION. 259 

hours it was taken down from the cross and laid in a 
sepulchre. That He would ever rise out of it, they say, 
they had only the faintest dream, in spite of words which 
encouraged the belief. But then, they add, that when He 
did rise, this seemed to them the explanation of all that 
He had done, and said, and been. They report words 
which they say they heard of Him : ' Ought not Christ 
to have suffered these things, and to enter into His 
glory?' If there was such a Son of God and Son of 
man, as He had led them to believe there was, then 
it seemed to them strange and monstrous that He 
should die, but natural and reasonable that He should 
rise. And soon they seem to have felt it scarcely less 
natural and necessary that He should ascend to Him 
from whom they believed that He had come. They 
relate, in a few simple words, how they arrived at that 
conviction, how He educated them into it. He ap- 
peared to them while they were met together, the doors 
being shut for fear of the Jews. He showed them His 
hands and His side ; He ate with them ; He vanished 
out of their sight ; He breathed on them ; He com- 
manded them to go and baptize all nations ; He said, 
'All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth;' 
He said, ' Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world.' 

I repeat their story. If it sounds unnatural, incon- 
sistent, grotesque to any, I certainly shall not make it 
less so by translating it out of their words into mine. 



260 EESULT OF THE TEACHING. 

But at all events this was clearly the effect of what they 
heard and saw, or fancied or pretended they heard and saw. 
They felt, This Lord of ours is actually related to us now 
as He was before He was crucified. He is related to His 
Father now as He was then. His body is the very 
body which He had then. But we are not henceforth to 
see Him often in that body. Our intercourse with Him 
will not be helped or hindered by the eye. It will be, as it 
has always been, intercourse with a divine Teacher, with 
a Guide and Enlightener of our spirits. It may be — 
must be — immeasurably more perfect than it has been, 
because He has been Himself cultivating and preparing 
us for it so long. But it must be, as He has always 
taught us to expect, intercourse with Him as the Head of 
a great kingdom, as the Lord of men, as One who has a 
work for us to do on behalf of men. It will be real and 
blessed if we enter into that work ; if we do it as those 
whom He has called to do it; if we do not seek to 
appropriate Him to ourselves, to confine Him within our 
boundaries ; if we remember that He is to fill all things, 
to bind earth and heaven in Himself. It must be — 
as He told us it would be — henceforth awful intercourse 
with the Father through Him, so that as in Him God 
has stooped to us, in Him we may ascend to God. 

' We may ascend to God ! Why that is the ideal 
language. You are now translating Hebrew into 
Greek.' If I am, I am doing what the Apostles did. 
Their minds — the minds of these dull Galileans — were 



THE GALILEANS SPIRITUAL BEINGS. 261 

idealised, spiritualised. It is what I wish you to observe ; 
and I wish you to observe also the process by which 
this strange transformation was wrought. A person 
whom they had known, with whom they felt that they 
were inseparably, eternally united, had gone out of this 
world ; to what place they knew not, nor cared to know ; 
but certainly to His Father, certainly to Him with whom 
He had always been one, with whom He had come to 
make them one, whom He had declared and proved to 
be their Father, as well as His Father. It was the 
great witness and demonstration to them that they were 
spirits having bodies, that they were not bodies into 
which a certain ethereal particle called spirit was in- 
fused. That which conversed with Grod was not some- 
thing accidental to them, but their substance. And 
this too was that by which they held converse with eacli 
other. Without this there was no possibility of their 
feeling together, suffering together, hoping together. 
With this, it was possible to feel, suffer, hope with all 
men, with the whole universe. But was it necessary to 
forget that Christ had a body in order that they might 
enter into this fellowship with His Father and with His 
brethren ? If they did forget that, the fellowship would 
cease, and their spirits would fall again into their old 
slavery. For this is the pledge of their union to 
Him ; His victory in the body, over the body, for the 
body, is theirs also. They could claim the dignity 
of spirits, because they were one with Him who has 



262 THE EUCHAEIST. 

redeemed the body and made it spiritual. They could 
have fellowship with all sufferers in the body, because 
He had suffered and died, and was the common Lord 
of all. They could rise to communion with the Father 
of Spirits, because there was One in a body who was 
His well-beloved Son, and who had offered Himself 
for them. 

The disciples of Christ, having gained this learning, 
could enter into the force of those words spoken at the 
Paschal supper, which had been at first merely bewilder- 
ing. They could remember how at Capernaum He had 
spoken of his flesh being meat indeed, of His blood being 
drink indeed ; how He had said that His flesh would be 
given for the life of the world ; how, when some were of- 
fended, He said, ' The spirit quickeneth, the flesh profiteth 
nothing; 7 and how He had connected these apparent 
contradictions with the question, ' What and if ye shall 
see the Son of man ascend up where He was before ? ' 
And now, as they ate the bread and drank the wine, 
according to His commandment, they could receive these 
tokens as the surest pledges that they were risen with 
Him ; that they were in His presence as much as ever ; 
that they had no life in them selves ; that the life of 
the world was in Him ; that His flesh and blood were 
indeed the bond between the creatures and the Creator, 
between the creatures and each other. 

You see, then, how careful the Apostles are to impress 
us with that fact, which wise men, who do not in general 



THE TWELVE APOSTLES ; SAUL OF TARSUS. 263 

consider thern trustworthy authorities, are also so anxious 
to impress us with, that they were very stupid people, — 
On a level with the most stupid. Thus they show that 
the great experiment of what man is and what he is 
meant for, was made in corjpore vili ; so that none could 
say, ' This lesson is not for me ; I cannot claim to be a 
spiritual being, and to be risen and ascended with 
Christ.' 

These Galileans, not being men of any gifts of soul, 
not men whose race or general culture led them to 
magnify the soul above the body, yet came to such an 
apprehension of the spiritual condition and glory of 
man, — to such a practical apprehension of it, — as no 
sages in any country had ever reached ; I say of Man ; 
for this was necessarily involved in the discovery that 
they were no better than the worst of their countrymen, 
and that Christ had cared for the worst and taken their 
nature. Though, as their mission was to the lost sheep 
of the House of Israel, all (in general) they needed to 
proclaim was, that the silliest of those sheep, — the one 
who had wandered furthest, — had an interest in all the 
sufferings and triumphs of the good Shepherd. 

But there came a time when a Jew of Tarsus felt 
that he was called to go forth and tell Greeks that they 
were possessors of all the blessings of the children of 
Abraham. The blessings of the children of Abraham ! 
"What a message to bring to the most graceful and 
refined people on the earth, that they might share the 



264 THE HEBREW AMONG THE GREEKS. 

privileges of those whom they accounted the most coarse 
and inhuman ! To assure those who believed that they 
must "be meant, in one way or other, to bear rule over 
mankind, because they had souls and the majority of 
men only an animal nature, that they might become what 
some of the least intellectual of that miserable majority 
already were ! And yet this was the proclamation of 
the Jewish tent-maker. And instead of its seeming to 
him or to his countrymen a message which flattered their 
national pride, Saul declared that, until that pride was 
crushed in him by a revelation of Jesus the Son of God, 
— until he knew Him to be indeed the King of his own 
spirit, and the risen and ascended King of the whole 
earth, he could not endure the thought that the Greek 
was cared for by the God whom he worshipped, and was 
a member of the same body with himself. When he 
did with his whole heart acknowledge that truth, and 
was convinced that he had a commission to declare it, 
Greeks, who had been given up to daemon worship, and 
whose thoughts of that which was divine had found the 
most exquisite visible forms to clothe themselves in, 
turned with wonder and awe to the invisible Lord whom 
the poor Syrian tribe had for centuries been confessing ; 
claimed Him as the common Father of them and the bar- 
barians ; owned that one perfect human image of Him 
had been manifested, and that all the images which they 
had formed must be cast away ; believed that a way was 
opened into His presence for them and for all, through 



GEOUND OF A FELLOWSHIP FOE MEN. 265 

the Mediator, who was in their nature at His right hand. 
On this ground a church of men, taken out of all nations 
and kindreds, stood ; this was the bond of their fellow- 
ship; this destroyed the divisions which locality, race, in- 
dividual temperament, old traditions, private judgments, 
had established among them. And when they met, as 
St. Paul told them they were to meet, and ikept that 
feast which Christ had instituted the same nighl> that He 
was betrayed; they met to hold fellowship with a Lord 
who had ascended in that body which He had offered 
up, and which death could not hold ; they met in the 
assurance that they were risen with Him and brought 
into His presence ; they met to realize their union with 
the whole family in heaven and earth, which was named 
in Him the elder Brother of it ; they met to give thanks 
in Him, to the Father who had made them meet to be 
partakers of an inheritance with the saints in light. 

But St. Paul discovered in each one of these churches, 
tendencies which were threatening the existence of this 
communion, and were bringing back all Judaism, all 
idolatries, all local divisions, the materialism of old 
traditions, the spiritual conceits of those who had not 
been taught to suspect themselves and to know that 
they knew nothing. He encountered each of these 
tendencies as he saw it rising ; traced it to its source ; 
pointed out the habits that were akin to it, and that 
were fostering it. Among the Corinthians he discovered 
the love of faction and party leaders, which was so 



266 DISEASES OF THE CHURCH. 

specially Greek ; among the Galatians, the influence of 
teachers who persuaded them that the Jew had still a 
position higher and diviner than that of all other men, and 
that they must become Jews if they were to have God's 
favour ; in the Colossians, speculations about angels, 
daemons, emanations; all that constituted the philoso- 
phised mythology of Orientals or Greeks. There is some- 
thing peculiarly adapted to this last habit of mind in the 
words which we find in the third chapter of the Epistle 
to the Colossians : ' If ye then be risen with Christ, 
seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth 
on the right hand of God.' He wished to remind the 
philosophers who were trying to scale heaven by their 
theories, that they would be baffled, as all the giants of 
former days had been. He wished to show them that 
what they called spirituality was not that at all ; that it 
was merely the exaltation of the soul at the expense of 
the body, of the sage at the expense of the common 
man, and that it led by a very direct road to the de- 
gradation of Humanity. He wished them to see how 
— not the soul or the sage — but the man, had been ex- 
alted in the exaltation of Christ ; how the whole Body, 
and not some of its choice members, might claim to be 
risen with Him; how impossible it was for any one 
to rise who tried to rise by himself, or to set himself in 
anywise apart from his brethren. But though there 
is this special appropriateness in the words, they are 
generally applicable to all conditions of the Church, 



RISEN WITH CHRIST; PALEY. 267 

which St. Paul discovered then, or which he expected-, 
might exist hereafter. They point out, I think, what 
would be the source of various diseases, and what would 
"be the one remedy for them. 

When we hear the words, c If ye "be risen with Christ,' 
our first inclination is probably to say, ' It is not an 
actual rising, of course, which he means ; the lan- 
guage is metaphorical. We are to rise, as one of the 
collects expresses it, in heart and mind.' Now Paley, 
who had a broad, simple, English nature, who was a 
utilitarian by profession, and who had as little tendency 
to mysticism as any one who ever lived, was struck espe- 
cially by the business-like quality of St. Paul's mind. 
You may say, Paley was an advocate, he held a brief for 
St. Paul. No doubt, but he need not have chosen that 
particular merit for his panegyric ; there were a thousand 
stereotyped common places about devotion, intrepidity, 
self-sacrifice, which would have done as well. He would 
certainly have resorted to them, and not to this phrase, if 
he had thought Paul was in the habit of using metaphors 
when he was writing on grave practical topics. No man 
of business would do that, and therefore Paley, whatever 
construction he might have put on, or have abstained 
from putting on, such passages as these, which are so 
familiar to every reader of St. Paul, so characteristic of 
his style and of the man, certainly must have concluded 
that they were not pieces of fine writing, not flourishes 
of rhetoric ; that they were unlike those expressions of 



268 THE FANTASTIC AND THE SUBSTANTIAL. 

poets or philosophers, which are far from "being unmean- 
ing or nonsensical, hut which he would have deemed so, 
about the wings of Psyche, or the ascent of the divine in 
man into its native element. Our Archdeacon must 
have perceived, with his shrewd northern common 
sense, that St. Paul, though very unlike him in most 
respects, was just as substantial as he was, just as little 
of a dreamer or a sentimentalist ; that there was a con- 
nexion between what he said of spirit and * business.' 

It is precisely this connexion which I have been 
endeavouring to trace, and which marks out St. Paul as 
' a Hebrew of the Hebrews.' The Teacher whom the 
other Apostles had known after the flesh, trained him, 
by discipline not less regular, mysterious, and severe 
than theirs, to know that the spirit is the substantial 
part of man ; that he is, because he is made in the image 
of God, who is a spirit ; that he is in a fallen, anomalous 
condition, when the senses which connect him with the 
earth are his rulers, and he judges what he is from them ; 
that he is in a restored, risen, regenerate condition, 
when he is able to assert his glory as a spiritual 
being by asserting his relation to God. Believing, 
therefore, that God had regenerated and restored Hu- 
manity in Christ, that He had called men to claim 
their relation to the Father through the Son, he could 
say boldly, ' You are risen with Christ.' It is not a 
metaphor or fancy that you are ; you will be always in a 
region of metaphors and fancies, always shaping some 



VICTORY OVER SENSE AND SUPERSTITION. 269 

dream of a nobler life out of the coarse material of 
this, until you take up this position. Then all be- 
comes simple and real. There is no more a straining 
after some high ideal; the most quiet, reasonable life 
you can lead is that of a creature which is raised into 
union and fellowship with a higher nature ; which is 
continually looking up to Him, in weakness and de- 
pendence leaning upon Him, confident that He can 
lift you, and is lifting you, above all the tilings 
which He has put in subjection to you, and is giving 
you the power to use them as your ministers, and to 
consecrate them to Him. And because you know how 
these things have corrupted you, and enslaved you, and 
become your idols, therefore as risen creatures, as re- 
generate sons of God, seek the things that are above, 
where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Claim 
your portion in the eternal Truth, and Love, and 
Righteousness, which He has manifested to you, and of 
which He has made you heirs; have done with all 
earth-born phantoms, superstitions, conceits, fears. They 
will cling about you, as all grovelling lusts and filthy 
imaginations will likewise. But give entertainment 
neither to one nor to the other. You can disengage 
yourselves from them. For you are members of Christ's 
body, and Christ is at the right hand of God. And if 
you say, ' But the earthly attraction is too mighty, and 
the sense of past evil and slavery recurs continually, 
and the moment we seem to rise we are fallen again, 



270 THE FLESH AND BLOOD. 

and when we seek to be united to our brethren, then 
come in all low, petty thoughts about ourselves ; and 
when we want to rule the world for God, the world gets 
the mastery, and rules us for the Devil ; then, I say, 
remember the words, u My flesh is meat indeed, my 
blood is drink indeed." Be assured that He who is at 
the right hand of God is not merely a spiritual being 
separated from you ; He is in your nature, He has taken 
your flesh. He has redeemed it, glorified it! Come, 
then, brother man, not as a fine, dainty, selfish epicure, 
to seek some special and solitary blessings for yourself; 
but come as one of a family, to seize a common food 
which is given to all, the food of a sacrifice which has 
been offered for all. Come, and eat it in haste, with 
your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand, 
as a man who has a journey before him and work 
in hand, as a pilgrim, not as a philosopher. But 
again: eat it, all of you, as risen men, as spiritual 
creatures ; not as those who are peeping into the ground 
and muttering to ask the aid of some familiar spirit, not 
as those who come with cowardly prostration before a 
daemon whose favour they are bribing ; but as those who 
have their habitation and their polity with Christ, their 
Eepresentative and Intercessor. 

If the Greeks, with their high spirituality, had any- 
thing to produce which was more spiritual than this — if, 
with their Humanity, they had anything which was 
more human — it is a pity they did not bring it forth in 



THE UNBELIEF OF THE CHURCH. 271 

those three centuries when they were struggling, with 
every possible advantage, against the Christian Church. 
But I think the more we look into the history of that 
Church in those centuries, and in all that have succeeded 
them, the more we shall perceive that it has become 
earthly, debased, superstitious, inhuman, just in propor- 
tion as it has lost hold of this truth of Christ's actual 
ascension, just in proportion as it has substituted a mere 
symbolical or ideal ascension for that, just in proportion 
as the Greek notion of men rising and ascending by 
dint of high gifts of soul into gods, has superseded the 
notion of the fishermen and the tent-maker, that they 
and the humblest men are risen with Christ, and may 
therefore seek those things that are above. 

My readers will perceive at once that this is a natural 
and direct inference from the doctrine I maintained in 
my last Essay. I showed then how many of the 
mischiefs and abominations which had tormented the 
Church, and made her the oppressor of mankind, arose 
from her disbelief in Christ as the Eegenerator of man. 
There are some special applications of this statement 
which belong to the subject I am now considering. 

The resurrection and ascension of Christ having been 
taken by a great portion of the Church as merely 
extraordinary, anomalous events — not as events which 
could not have been otherwise, which exhibit eternal 
laws, which vindicate the true order and constitution of 
human existence — while at the same time there has been 



272 MIEACLES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

an assurance that they were necessary to men, and that 
they must in some way be pattern events, examples of 
that which men were to be and to do — a series of acts, 
attesting the power of spirit over body, the capacity of 
men to overcome the powers of nature, the possibility 
of rising into communion with the infinite, has been 
imagined. These have been considered strange ex- 
ceptions in the order of the world; and being such, 
the whole inventive power of the human spirit has been 
employed in decking them out and connecting them 
with the life of some favourite saint or hero. By degrees 
it has been discovered that a number of these triumphs 
may be referred to ordinary principles and laws, which 
govern the human frame, and the course of nature ; that 
other portions of the stories are traceable to mistake, 
confused reporting, or direct fraud. Still not merely 
the affections of men, but their consciences have clung 
to these instances of an actual connexion between the 
spiritual and the external world, and of the dominion 
of the first over the second. In vain you produce the 
clearest evidences of imposture in a thousand instances ; 
in vain you talk of natural causes. The heart of man 
says, ' Here are signs of a faith which was not false, 
but true ; here are tokens of that which is not natural, 
but supernatural.' And now a new change is evidently 
taking place. Science itself is becoming dynamical 
rather than mechanical ; powers and agencies are disco- 
vered in nature itself, not less mysterious than those 



HATERS OF SCIENCE AND ART. 273 

which miracle workers spoke of. Man is able, through 
science, to exercise such powers as seem to attest the 
dominion of spirit over nature more completely than 
any signs they wrought. The victories of the old artist 
over the marble, the mysterious energy by which he 
compelled it to express the thoughts and emotions of 
living beings, are leading many whom these facts do not 
impress, in the same direction ; the legends of Greece are 
received as striking commentaries on the powers of her 
sculptors and poets. The Romish priests, as teachers of 
youth, see that a movement is going on very like that 
which the popes rashly encouraged at the revival of letters. 
Some of them cry out that it must be checked. ' Let us 
have as little science as we can. The old notions about 
the sun are safer than the new. They must be restored 
if possible. Let us banish the classics from our schools. 
The Greek legends are corrupting our youth. They 
and profane art must be proscribed.' It is impossible 
not to see that many in Protestant England, who hate 
these priests -on other grounds, would be ready to join 
them in their prohibitions. There are those among 
us who think that the facts of science, unless they are 
well sifted and sorted by religious men, and mixed with 
religious maxims, are likely to disturb the faith of the 
people, and that the beautiful forms of Greek sculpture, 
especially if they are not clothed, and made unnatural, 
must corrupt their morals. I shudder at these notions, 
but I do not wonder at them. It seems to me that the 

T 



274 SUCH FEELINGS SHAMEFUL IN US. 

Romish protesters are wise in their generation. If their 
disciples are to learn fictions, it is better they should not 
he able to compare them with facts ; it is not well that 
they should know how many of their stories are borrowed 
from Pagan sources, and how much less pure the copies 
are than the originals. On higher grounds they may be 
right in thinking that those who are not allowed to read 
the Scriptures in their simplicity and breadth, have 
no standard for judging of what is good and evil in 
other literature, and had better be kept from it alto- 
gether. The existence of such feelings amongst us is 
far less excusable. Our education in the Bible ought 
to have taught us to believe in a God of Truth; 
to reverence facts, because they must be His facts ; to 
long that laws should be discovered because they are 
His ; to fear nothing but what is false, that being cer- 
tainly of the Devil. Our Bible culture ought to have 
made us understand that nothing is impure save the 
corrupt and darkened conscience and will, and that that 
may convert all things, even the holy words of inspiration, 
into its own nature. The breadth, simplicity, naked- 
ness of the Scripture language should have taught us to 
dread what is disguised and dressed up for the purpose 
of concealment as immoral and dangerous ; to regard 
the study of forms as they came from the divine 
hand, with the beauty which He has impressed upon 
them, as safe and elevating. Such has been the 
effect of the Bible upon the daughters of England; 



WHERE OUR EDUCATION HAS FAILED. 275 

if her sons manifest it less, the Greek legends are 
not to blame. Those, like Milton, who have been 
most deeply penetrated by the meaning of these, if their 
minds have had a sonnd Hebrew root, have been the 
purest and the bravest. I do not believe any single 
man of us can look back and say, ' It was this 
culture, or my diligence in seeking it, which has done 
me injury.' It was a want of zeal and sincerity some- 
where else. It was that the words the boy heard in 
church, or was compelled to learn, about the religion 
of his countrymen, did not present themselves to him as 
connected with those which he was reading in his Greek 
or Latin form. One did not illustrate the other ; they 
seemed to be mere contradictions, intended for different 
creatures. If the heart acknowledged a fellowship and 
sympathy with the one, it seemed as if the other was 
frowning disapprobation. The Hebrew Scriptures, and 
the Creed, and Catechism, were taken to be setting forth 
a theory about God. The Greek world was human. And 
what had the human and divine to do with each other ? 
Yes ! — let the words be rung in the ears of our divines 
till they have taken in the full force of them — our 
youths ask, What have the divine and human to do 
with each other? in a country which receives as the 
cardinal tenet of its theology, that Jesus Christ is very 
God and very Man. 

{ We accept that tenet certainly in a sense.' Yes, 
Sir, and, in the name of my countrymen, of our faith,, 



276 CRISIS IN ENGLAND. 

and of God, I demand in what sense? Is it a real 
sense, is it a fundamental sense? Is it one which 
explains the facts of Humanity, or leaves them unex- 
plained? Because if it is, be assured people will get 
their explanation elsewhere. The Greek legends, all 
feeble as they are because they interpret God by human 
measures and do not bring men to a divine measure, will 
yet be preferred to a mere doctrine which puts God at 
an infinite distance from man, and makes Him an object 
of dread not of confidence to the creatures who are 
declared to be formed in His image and who are 
craving for the knowledge of Him. 

These thoughts must press heavily on the heart of 
every one who studies the condition of England, — 
especially of her young men, — at this time. The struggle 
between the tendencies which incline them to regard 
Christianity as utterly hopeless, — as convicted of inca- 
pacity for giving any relief to the efforts of human 
beings after a higher state, — and to accept a Christ- 
ianity which guarantees the salvation of their souls 
if they will abjure all such efforts, and surrender to a 
system that which their consciences tell them they can 
only surrender to God — this struggle is more tremendous 
than any of us know. Their English hearts solemnly 
protest against either alternative; but it is impossible 
for men, whose minds are awake, to live in a per- 
petual see-saw ; nothing, they feel, is less English, less 
manly, than such a position. What evil may not be 



HOW IT MAY END. 277 

awaiting us, if all the sounds which reach such per- 
turbed spirits are loud ravings against Rationalism 
and Romanism, while nothing is offered them but 
what looks less sincere and hopeful than either! But 
oh! what good, beyond anything I can think of or 
dream, may God be preparing for us through this 
conflict! What a day of joy may succeed a night 
of travail, if the message is indeed brought to us, 
' The Man is born into the world !' And is not this 
the message which is contained in the old story of 
Christ's ascension to the right hand of God, if we take 
that story not as a legend, but as the fulfilment of all 
legends ; not as an idea, but as the substantiation of 
an idea in a fact ? With what delight might we then 
trace the unfolding mysteries of science, believing that 
each new fact is revealing some step in an ascending 
scale of creatures, the lowest of which is an object 
of creating and redeeming love, the highest of which 
is in communion with the Son of God! How the 
triumphs of art would then be felt as witnesses for 
the subjection of all things to man, a subjection accom- 
plished in Him who has gone through death and has 
ascended to His Father ! What joyful testimony would 
every mythological story then bring in, not to the wishes 
and aspirations of men only, but to God's satisfaction 
of them ! Why may not the countrymen of Bacon, 
and Shakspeare, and Milton, aspire thus to declare to 
all mankind, the signiflcancy of science and art, the 



278 THE EUCHAKIST. 

essential and practical connexion of earth with heaven, 
of the human and the divine ? 

But they have still a higher work to accomplish, 
which perhaps must precede the other. I have alluded 
more than once in this Essay to that feast which the 
Galilean fishermen were told to keep when they sat at 
the Paschal supper ; which St. Paul said that he was 
commanded to perpetuate in the churches which were 
gathered by the preaching of his gospel from the different 
tribes of men. For eighteen centuries Christendom has 
kept this feast; there has been no other like it in the 
world. It has spoken of the union of rich and poor, 
of men of all races, kindreds, educations, opinions, with 
each other, and with a divine Lord who had died for 
them. All the sections of Christendom have kept up 
some form of it, save the Quakers, and they affirm that 
they keep it in a higher sense. All the sections of Chris- 
tendom have made it the symbol of their separation from 
the rest. That which was to unite all men, of every kind 
and degree of intellect, has been made the subject of the 
most subtle, intellectual distinctions. That which was 
to deliver men from the bondage of sense, has been made 
the minister of the senses. The doctrine of Transubstan- 
tiation has gathered up all idealism and all materialism 
into itself, is a compendious expression of all the con- 
tradictions in the hearts and understandings of human 
beings. Yet what hold it seems to have upon those hearts ! 
How it defies the skill of Protestant divines, the wit of 



ENGLISH PUZZLES CONCEKMNG IT. 279 

Protestant scoffers ! How it mixes itself, unconsciously, 
with their theories ! How mightily it has stood its 
ground against all notions that the Ibread and wine were 
but the memorials of an absent Lord, or that the believer 
created a Presence which, but for His faith, would not 
be! How it is strengthened by all Quaker experi- 
ments to make spiritual feelings and notions, which ap- 
pertain to the few — the expression of which is intelligible 
to still fewer— the media of intercourse, instead of those 
symbols which speak of food and life for mankind ! 
My dear countrymen are puzzled by all these observa- 
tions which their experience forces on them. They 
are impatient of theories, unskilful in forming them. 
Yet it seems to them as if they must have a theory, 
either compounded of all theories that have ever existed, 
or the negation of all : — some grains of Paschasius, a few 
globules of Luther, an infusion of Zwingle, shaken toge- 
ther, and plentifully diluted with the aquajpura of George 
Fox. Then tired of a mixture, which must be either 
tasteless or nauseous, this man plunges into Romanism; 
that exchanges sacraments for some transcendental ex- 
position of them ; very soon, when the flimsiness of 
the exposition is discovered, for the open worship of 
mammon, for his sacraments, in which the outward sign 
and the thing signified are so perfectly consubstantiated. 
Oh, brethren ! must we, being such blockheads, as our 
German and Gallic brethren consider us, and as we 
know ourselves to be, in all metaphysical conceptions, 



280 HOW WE MAY RECEIVE IT AND USE IT. 

always try to rival them? Is it not possible God 
may have some other work for us, not so satisfactory 
to our pride, but, on the whole, if we perform it faith- 
fully, not less serviceable to mankind, or less to His 
glory? Has it struck you that we are not merely 
countrymen of Bacon, Shakspeare, and Milton, but also 
of some millions of men, living on our own soil and in 
our own day, speaking our tongue, who work with their 
hands, and who have, besides those hands, senses which 
converse with this earth, sympathies that should unite 
them to each other, spirits that might hold converse with 
God? I do not know that they want theories about 
transubstantiation or consubstantiation, Romanist dog- 
mas or transcendental dogmas, Le Maistre or Schelling. 
But I do know that they want occupation for these 
senses, these hearts, these spirits. And I do know 
that you can, if you will, say to them, one and all, 
' Brothers, here are the pledges that we have a great 
Elder Brother, who was a suffering peasant here on 
earth, who died and rose again, and who is at the 
right hand of God. These tell us that we are one 
with Him where He is. We need not ascend into 
Heaven to bring Him down ; we need not go down into 
the deep to bring Him up again. You may hold con- 
verse with Him where He is. He has proved you to be 
spirits. He has given you this bread and this wine, 
these common things which belong to us all alike, that 
we may claim a participation in that body and that 



HOME ; OUR COLONIES. 281 

blood which were as real as yours, which were given for 
you, raised from death for you, glorified at God's right 
hand for you. Take, eat ; receive this New Testament 
in His blood. Confess your selfishness, your divisions, 
your heart-burnings. Claim the unity which belongs to 
you. Go your ways; work like men; till the earth, 
and subdue it for God ; make it bring forth corn for the 
sower, bread for the eater. In due time it will be all 
God wants it to be. Meantime you have a city that 
hath foundations ; a house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens.' 

And there is something besides which perhaps we 
have forgotten. Though it has not pleased God to 
make us clever in building systems, He has seen fit to 
bestow on us an empire on which the sun does not 
set. He has committed to our care some hundreds 
of millions of human beings, who have certainly the 
same flesh and blood with us, and who show by the 
strange speculations which their sages (often rich in 
the gifts we are so deficient in) express in words, 
and which are for the people embodied in acts, that 
they are spiritual beings, and that they know they 
are. Most of our civil and military servants, though 
they have done some parts of their business admirably, 
and have taught these people to believe that there is 
truth and justice among men — alas ! they have often 
doubted and denied their own position — have felt that 
with this part of their mind, though the most radical, 



282 THE HEATHEN WORLD. 

though affecting their whole existence, they could not 
meddle. Certain missionaries of different schools and 
sects, whom these officials have regarded with no little 
suspicion, have meddled with them, and have served to 
leave a vague impression upon the natives, first, that 
all they had held themselves is false; secondly, that 
we could offer them in exchange the choice of some 
twenty different religions, manufactured in Europe, and 
belonging to white men. Suppose we could go to them 
and say, ' There is an Advocate and Intercessor, not for 
Europeans, but for men, at the right hand of God. And 
here are the witnesses that you as men, having flesh 
and blood, and being, as you know, spiritual creatures, 
are one with Him, sharers of His nature, and, therefore, 
children of Grod, fellow-heirs, with all men everywhere, 
of His kingdom,' — does it not seem possible that the 
animal and the human sacrifice, the fearful invocation to 
Kali, the prayer-machine of the Buddhist, might disap- 
pear more quickly, than while we merely argue with 
them for opinions respecting which we are divided as 
well as they ? 



These are thoughts which I have addressed specially 
to English Churchmen, who, if they heeded them, might, 
perhaps, in due time, first bring the sects in their 
own land to meet them in a common sacrifice and 
a common Lord ; secondly, might reconcile Protestants 



MATERIALISTS AND SPIRITUALISTS. 283 

and Romanists abroad, instead of hovering uneasily 
between them, or showing a contempt, which is amply 
returned, towards both. 

I now lay these same thoughts before my Unitarian 
brethren, of both sections. What I have said of Paley, 
may show those whom the younger school stigma- 
tise as materialist or utilitarian, that I do not feel 
separated from them ; that I do not think it is needful 
for them to go through an initiation in any German or 
American school, before they can understand St. Paul 
or St. John. Good manly sense seems to me so precious 
and noble a gift, that I am afraid I often speak into- 
lerantly of those who put spiritualism and philosophy in 
place of it. But I have no right to do so, for I have felt 
that temptation strongly; and if I have felt also the 
punishment for having indulged it, and the reaction 
against it, I should be the last to cast stones at any 
offender. Most earnestly, therefore, do I call upon all of 
the spiritual school to join with those from whom they 
are in part alienated, and with me, in believing that there 
is One ascended on high, and on the right hand of God, 
who is our Mediator and theirs ; who claims us as spirits 
now, and can change the body of our humiliation to the 
body of His glory, by that power whereby He is able 
to subdue even all things to Himself. 



ESSAY XII. 



THE JUDGMENT DAY. 



There is no question which exercises the minds of 
moralists and politicians so much as the question of 
responsibility. How are you to make ministers of 
state, legislators, judges, responsible? To whom are 
the highest officers in every state responsible? Are 
they to be practically ruled by those whom they profess 
to rule ? Is the sovereign a sovereign only in name ? 
Is the ultimate authority vested in those who, by a 
fiction, are called his subjects ? Or is he governed only 
by some code written in letters which he has himself 
the power of interpreting, with which he may even at 
times dispense ? Or is he an autocrat, whose own will 
is the last court of appeal, that to which all must not 
only in name, but in deed, do homage ? We all know in 
what an infinite variety of forms these questions present 
themselves, how they force themselves upon us in the 
business of every day life. 

The notion which prevails mostly among ourselves 
is, I think, something of this kind. In a civilized 



PUBLIC OPINION. 285 

country — above all, in one which possesses a free press 
— there is a certain power, mysterious and indefinite in 
its operations, but producing the most obvious and 
mighty effects, which we call public opinion. If this 
can be brought to bear upon the acts and proceedings 
of any functionary, we suppose that there is as much 
security for his good behaviour as can be possibly 
obtained. He lives under the conviction that his acts, 
as a public servant, are open to a vigilant and suspi- 
cious scrutiny ; experience assures him that no nice or 
accurate line will be drawn between this part of his life 
and that which he might wish to claim as private — his 
domestic relations, his opinions on the different topics 
which interest his fellow-men. Thus his whole exist- 
ence is in a great measure exposed ; his sphere of inde- 
pendent action or judgment is very limited. Though 
the right of thinking for himself may be one which 
he is anxious to assert, nay, which the habits and 
rules of the times require him to assert, the actual 
power of thinking for himself can only be exercised 
under strict conditions ; practically, the circle in which 
he moves, or the world at large, or those, be they who 
they may, who direct the world, think for him. 

When public opinion has been for some time deified 
in this manner, there comes a strong recoil. ' Is it 
possible,' men ask, ' to live honestly upon such terms as 
these ? Has the progress of civilisation, as it is called, 
not brought us into greater freedom, but only into more 



286 REBELLION AGAINST IT. 

hopeless slavery ? If we are to have masters, should 
we not know who they are ? Should we not, at least, 
feel what is their right over us ? Should they not have 
some claim to our reverence, if they have no hold upon 
our affections? What can he so ignominious as this 
subjection to judges whom we do not in our hearts 
believe to be wise — to whom in secret we attribute little 
sincerity or truth — who are the sport of a thousand 
accidents and influences, as vulgar as any of those 
which could pervert our own judgments if we were left 
to ourselves ? Is it not the business of a man to shake 
off such a yoke as this — to say that he will not have his 
deeds or thoughts moulded by this opinion — that he will 
not bow down and worship an image, which has been 
set up he cannot tell when or by whom, but which exacts 
devotion to it under the heaviest penalties? Should 
not a minister of state, a legislator, a judge, hold him- 
self responsible to some other tribunal than this ? Must 
he not do so, if the words which go forth from his lips, 
if the deeds which he performs, are ever to be of any 
worth to ages to come, even to his own ?' 

These complaints are uttered. In youth, many strong 
resolutions are often founded upon them — many bold 
and eccentric courses taken in pursuance of them. But 
again and again the man is driven into the old rut. He 
finds that the world was right in saying that self-will is 
a perilous and fatal guide. He thinks in vain where 
a substitute for this strange force of opinion is to be 



REFLECTIONS ON ITS NATURE. 287 

found ; how wicked men are ever to be curbed, if it is 
not held up to them as an object of fear ; how well-dis- 
posed men are ever to be kept in an even course, if they 
have not some hope of its protection. It is vague, 
indefinite, intangible enough, no doubt ; but is. not that 
the case also with all the powers which affect us most in 
the physical world ? The further men advance in the 
study of nature, the more of these uncontrollable, invi- 
sible forces seem to make themselves known. If we 
think with awe of mysterious affinities, of some mighty 
principle which binds the elements of the universe 
together, why should not we wonder also at these moral 
affinities, this more subtle magnetism, which bears 
witness that every man is connected by the most 
intimate bonds with his neighbour, and that no one 
can live independently of another? 

It may easily be admitted that a reflection of this 
kind is suggested when we meditate upon public 
opinion, — the insignificance of the agents by which it 
works, and the greatness of its results for good or for 
evil. But I apprehend no one is able to derive this 
lesson from it, or at least to turn it to any practical use, 
till he has risen in some measure above the terror of it ; 
any more than he can estimate the sublimity of a storm, 
while he is trembling lest it should in a moment destroy 
him and all that are dear to him, or than he can think 
of all the hallowed associations which a churchyard 
at night-time might call up, while he is dreading lest he 



288 THE GKEAT ASSIZE. 

should be pursued by some pale spectre. If we could 
learn the secret of overcoming this power — of acting 
as if we were indeed responsible to some other and 
more righteous one — if that conviction could be as 
present to us as the thought of the judgment which our 
fellow-creatures pass upon us — if our whole lives were 
moulded by the one belief as much as they are wont to 
be moulded by the other — we should be able to under- 
stand what the world's judgment can do for us as well 
as what it cannot do ; the very same principle which 
keeps us from obeying it would keep us from despising 
it ; we should be saved from setting up our own tastes, 
caprices, nay, our own most deliberate judgments, 
against the tastes, caprices, judgments of our own or 
other ages ; just because we should have courage to 
say to them, one and all, " Whether it be right in the 
sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, 
judge ye." 

" Divines have thought that the words, " We must all 
appear before the judgment-seat of Christ," might be so 
taken into the hearts of men, and become such a strong 
abiding conviction there, that all the opinions of con- 
temporaries, all fear of popular assemblies, even of 
the most august earthly tribunals, should shrink and 
dwindle before them. They have, therefore, presented 
to their disciples the picture of a great assize, to which 
all ages and nations shall be summoned. What has 
been the effect of such descriptions ? We feel ourselves 



DESCRIPTIONS OF IT. 289 

at leisure to analyse our own emotions in listening to 
them — to compare the methods in which the subject is 
treated by different artists — to criticise their skill. We 
observe how much more powerful and judicious Jeremy 
Taylor is than others, because he has gathered together 
distinct groups, such ' as those whom Caesar Augustus 
did tax,' instead of trusting to vague, cloudy abstrac- 
tions. Surely this is proof sufficient that the preacher 
has failed of his purpose. He has not given us some 
mighty conviction before which we must bow, which 
will go with us where we go, and stay with us where we 
stay. The fabric of this vision, raised by however noble 
an architect, fades more surely, more rapidly, than that 
of any of the earthly temples which he tells us are 
perishing. As it departs, it leaves the impression on 
our mind that the vulgarest, pettiest motives, which act 
upon us in the bustle of the common world, are more 
efficient than the most magnificent anticipations of that 
which is to be, in some far-off period. We may mourn 
that it should be so ; we may utter some common-places 
about the weakness or depravity of human nature ; but 
in some way or other we reconcile ourselves to the 
discovery. 

Have earnest, devout men, then, deceived them- 
selves in this matter ? Were they wrong in supposing 
that the belief in Christ's judgment ought to be a 
mighty belief for mankind? Was it not a mighty 
one for their own hearts? I am sure they were not 

u 



290 THE JUDGMENT PRESENT. 

deceived. The thought of Christ's judgment was their 
strength in prosperity and in calamity. It saved them 
from floating with the current of their times when it 
was gentle, — from being swept away by it when it was 
strong. But I do not conceive they would have de- 
rived the least support from the anticipation of standing 
before Christ in some distant day, if they had not 
believed they were standing before Him in their own 
day. They were sure that for them the judgment 
was already set, the books were already opened ; that 
they were every hour of their lives in the presence of 
One who knew the intents of their hearts, and who was 
calling them to account for them and for the acts to 
which they gave birth. It is for the efforts which they 
have made to ground us in the same habitual persuasion 
that we are chiefly beholden to them. Whatever light 
they have thrown on the Scripture doctrine of a judg- 
ment to come has proceeded from the light in which 
they were continually walking. If they have ever 
darkened that doctrine, or coloured and distorted it by 
their fancy, we may trace the error to their forgetfulness 
of that truth which the writers of the New Testament 
never suffer us to forget — that Jesus Christ is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 

Perhaps you will say, 'After all, these descriptions 
which you represent as so ineffectual, even when the 
ability displayed in them is greatest, are only the ex- 
pansion and realisation of the words in the Creed : 



THE CEEED AND THE PICTURE. 291 

fl From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead." If one is weak, the other must be weaker ; if the 
picture which tries to embody the fact is of such small 
worth, what can be the use of merely repeating a bare 
announcement of it ?' 

The objection would be most reasonable if the words, 
'He shall come to judge the quick and dead,' could 
be separated from all that has gone before — if no 
pains have been taken to tell us who He is. But if the 
Creed has been declaring Him to be the Son of God our 
Lord ; if it has been exhibiting Him, first, in the closest 
relationship with God, — secondly, in the closest relation- 
ship with man; this relationship not being grounded 
upon any acts which are recorded afterwards, but being 
the ground and explanation of those acts ; not being the 
consequence of His Incarnation, or Death, or Resurrection, 
or Ascension, but the cause of them ; then I apprehend 
the practical difference between the dry statement and 
the brilliant translation of it is immeasurable. Accord- 
ing to the one, it is impossible, without violating the 
law of my being, the eternal order and constitution of 
things, that I should separate myself from Christ. He 
is the Lord of my own self, of my spirit ; whether I 
confess Him or not I must continually hear His voice, be 
open to His reproofs. Wherever I am, whatever I am 
doing, He must be there ; He must be the standard of 
my acts ; the right in them must be that which has 
originated in Him, — the wrong must be the revolt from 



292 CHRIST ALWAYS WITH US. 

Hint. No present or possible conditions of our being 
can change this order. Death, it has been proved, does 
not dissolve our relation to Him ; He has entered into it 
for us. The Resurrection from the dead is a resur- 
rection for us as well as for Him; it has vindicated 
man's true condition, not subverted it. The Ascension, 
if we admit it to be a fact, not a mere idea, proves, as I 
urged in the last Essay, not that we are divided from 
Him, but that place cannot divide us ; that we are 
spirits ; that when we act as if we belonged to the 
bodies which we are meant to rule, we stoop knowingly, 
and are condemned by our consciences. Such a doc- 
trine, I said, so far from being at variance with the 
facts of history and the laws of the physical universe, is 
confirmed by both. History shows how confident men 
have been in all times that they were meant to ascend 
above their earthly conditions, and to have fellowship 
■with an unseen world ; their noblest dreams have had 
this origin, — their wildest and most degrading supersti- 
tions have arisen from their incapacity to claim what they 
felt was their right. Physical science shows how many 
violations of true and divine laws men commit when 
they become slaves of their bodies, and into what igno- 
rance they fall when they accept the testimony of their 
senses as determining those laws ; in either case they are 
evidently not obeying reason, but setting it at nought. 
What follows ? This exclusion of Christ from the eyes 
of sense is not, as men fancy, an interruption of that 



HOW THE DISCIPLES DISCOVERED IT. 293 

judgment which He, as Lord of their spirits, is con- 
tinually pronouncing ; they are not less in His presence, 
open to his clear, all-penetrating vision, now, than if 
He were walking in their streets. The disciples who 
accompanied Him when He journeyed from Galilee to 
Jerusalem, and sometimes were amazed at the mystery 
of His being and at His knowledge of their thoughts, 
understood first when He was parted from them how 
entirely independent that being and that knowledge 
were of the accidents which then surrounded Him — how 
much these accidents had interfered with their recog- 
nition of Him. As long as they had any notion that 
they stood to Him only in the peculiar relation of dis- 
ciples to a Master — as long as that relation seemed to 
them an external fleshly relation — they wanted the real 
awe and check, as well as the real help and support, of 
His presence. It was when they understood that this 
relation was common to them with a multitude of 
persons no-wise bound to them by kindred, occupa- 
tion, race ; it was when they learnt that the real bond 
between a disciple and a Lord is not a visible, but 
an invisible one, that they exercised themselves to 
have consciences void of offence, being certain that all 
things were naked and open to the eyes of Him with 
whom they had to do, and that to be reproved by Him 
was a far more serious thing than to be reproved by 
Sanhedrims or Proconsuls. The Creed, then, affirms, 
for you, and me, and mankind, first of all this dis- 



294 WHAT IS A JUDGE ? 

covery of theirs — that Christ, ascended on high at the 
right hand of God, is our judge, the judge of the living 
and the dead. I do not say that this is all which the 
words signify ; I do not think so ; but I say that, what- 
ever else they signify, they signify this, and that we 
never can enter into the other part of their signification 
if we do not acknowledge this as the groundwork of it. 
And though this meaning may be latent in our popular 
discourses on a great judgment day — and I have no 
doubt it is — I cannot think that the hearers or readers 
of those discourses commonly detect it; they suppose 
that they are, at some distant, unknown period, to be 
brought into the presence of One who is far from them 
now, and who is not now fulfilling the office of a Judge, 
whatever other may be committed to Him. 

There is another difference, not less radical and essen- 
tial, which, I think, we must all at times have perceived, 
if not when we were repeating this article of the Creed, 
at least when we were reading those parts of the Scrip- 
tures which most illustrate it. What is this office of a 
Judge ? If we follow the popular representations of the 
great Assize, we should conclude that it was fulfilled 
when certain persons were subjected to an infinite 
penalty for their transgressions, and certain others were 
absolved from that penalty, — perhaps acquired, by some 
means, an infinite reward. It is obvious that those who 
make these statements, intend to accommodate themselves 
to the ordinary maxims of men; to those which are 



SCEIPTUEE IDEA OF IT. 295 

recognised in earthly jurisprudence. They rightly as- 
sume that there must be an analogy between the divine 
procedure and that which we own to be righteous here. 
' The difference of degree,' they would say, ' does not 
prevent the inspired writers, and ought not, therefore, to 
prevent us, from resorting to the same language to re- 
present both.' I fully accept this statement, and, there- 
fore, I would put it to any English jurist, whether such 
an account of the function of a judge as this, satisfies 
any conception that he has formed of it? Would not 
he say at once, ' It is a very secondary part of this 
function to assign penalties or rewards : that, in a 
majority of cases, is done already by the law which 
the judge announces. But to discern who is right and 
who is wrong ; amidst a multitude of shifting, dis- 
tracting appearances, to find out the fact; to detect 
the lie which is hidden under the plausible coherent 
story ; to justify the true and honest purpose which may 
have got itself bewildered in a variety of complications 
and contradictions, — hie labor, hoc ojpus; here is, indeed, 
a sphere for the exercise of that judicial faculty, which 
we all esteem so highly, — scarcely any of us enough. 
And I am certain we shall find that, when the Scrip- 
tures speak of a divine Judge, it is this correspond- 
ence, this analogy that they mainly suggest to us. 
You hear of the Word of God, who is quick, and 
powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword ; who 
divides asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow, who 



296 MINOS AND RHADAMANTHUS. 

is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 
You hear St. Paul declaring that though he is not con- 
scious of anything against himself, he does not judge 
himself, but He that judgeth him is the Lord. You 
find him using, in the same passage, the remarkable 
expression which occurs again and again in his writings, 
and to which I shall have to refer presently for another 
purpose, that it is a very little thing for him to be judged 
by a human day* Such an expression, so strikingly 
denoting the kind of light which men were able to throw 
upon the secrets of the heart, is a key to thousands of 
others in the New Testament — nay, I will be bold to 
say— a key to the language of the Bible, wherever there 
is an allusion to the judgments of Grod, or to Christ as 
judge. Everywhere the idea is kept before us of judg- 
ment, in its fullest, largest, most natural sense, as im- 
porting discrimination or discovery. Everywhere that 
discrimination or discovery is supposed to be exercised 
over the man himself, over his internal character, over 
his meaning and will. Everywhere the substitution 
of any mere external trial or examination for this, 
is rejected as inconsistent with the spirit and gran- 
deur of Christ's revelation. 

Nowhere is this difference more remarkably brought 
out than in the words which we have translated, ' For 
Ave shall all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ.' 
When we hear these words, without examining them, or 

* 1 Cor. iv. 3, dvQpouTTiwqs TJ/j.4pas. 



II. COKINTHIANS, CHAP. V. 297 

their context, we are likely enough to say, l Here is the 
old story of Minos and Rhadamanthus again ; St. Paul 
knew that it was familiar to the ears of the Corinthians. 
He alters it, and adapts it to his Christian notions.' I 
am far indeed from denying that St. Paul was anxious to 
preserve the eternal truth which lay hid in those legends. 
He would have been most grieved if he had, in any one 
point, made the Greeks, to whom he proclaimed a faith, 
unbelievers. It was his duty to avail himself, as far as 
it was possible, even of the forms of language, — espe- 
cially if they were not merely Greek, but human forms, 
appealing to the feelings and consciences of men in all 
countries, — which had been associated with old con- 
victions. To this extent I am ready to admit that 
the word ' judgment-seat,' or ' tribunal,' was intended to 
remind the Corinthians both of the courts with which 
they were familiar in their own city, of the more solemn 
Areopagus, and of those which their imaginations had 
fashioned on the model of these for the pale spectres in 
the world below. But if this were his object, mark 
what the process of transformation is. In the first ten 
verses of this chapter, and several of the preceding, he 
has been working out the doctrine that man stands in a 
twofold relation ; to an earthly visible tabernacle which 
is dissolving ; to an invisible Lord. The dissolution of 
that perishable tabernacle will not, he says, involve 
homelessness, nakedness. There is a new clothing pro- 
vided for him ; a house not made with hands, eternal in 
the heavens. Here there is much groaning ; the body 



298 MANIFESTATION BEFORE CHRIST. 

bears the signs of suffering and death. He longs to put 
on one which shall be free, living, immortal, ' that mor- 
tality may be swallowed up of life.' He believes that 
God is working in him to produce such a renovation, 
and has given His Spirit as an earnest of it. He is con- 
fident, therefore, and had rather be absent from the body 
which is making such demands upon him, that he might 
be present with the Lord of his spirit. ' For we walk,' 
he says, ' by faith, not by sight.' We do not see Him 
to whom we are united ; we only believe Him and trust 
Him. And whether that vision at any time is strong or 
weak, whether we are crushed by the external taber- 
nacle, or are rising above it, we are still ambitious to be 
well-pleasing to Him l For we must all ' — not appear — 
but ' be made manifest before the tribunal of Christ.' 
A time must come when it will be clearly discovered to 
all men what their state was while they were pilgrims 
in this world ; that they were in a spiritual relation just 
as much as they were in relation to those visible things 
of which their senses took cognizance. That which has 
been hidden will be made known ; the darkness will no 
longer be able to quench the light which has been shin- 
ing in the midst of it, and seeking to penetrate it ; eacli 
man will be revealed as that which he actually is, that 
every one may receive the things done in the body ac- 
cording to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.* 

* "lva KOfilarfrai eKacrros rcL hia rod ad/jxaros, irp6s a eirpa^eu, etre aryaQov 
efre ko.k6v. I do not think any one can be exactly satisfied with our 
rendering of this sentence, though I am not prepared to suggest another. 



THENCE HE SHALL COME. 299 

This language is, I think, strictly and beautifully 
consistent with all that the Apostle has taught us of 
Christ as the Redeemer and Justifier — with the whole 
purpose and method of His Gospel. But it certainly 
suggests to us the thought, that the tribunal of Christ is 
one which is not to be set up for the first time in some 
distant day, amidst earthly pomp and ceremonial, but 
that it is one before which we, in our own inmost being, 
are standing now, and that the time will come when we 
shall know that it is so, and when all which has con- 
cealed the Judge from us will be taken away. 

' But if that is the sense of St. Paul's words, why do 
we speak in the Apostles' Creed of His coming thence 
to judge the quick and dead ? why do we say in the 
Nicene Creed that He shall come again in glory ? ' 
These questions are so important, and they connect 
themselves with so many thoughts which are occupying 
and agitating men's minds in the present day, that I am 
most anxious fairly to consider them. 

If I read the words, From thence He shall come, follow- 
ing immediately upon the account of an ascension into 
heaven, which is described as a great triumph for Him 
and for mankind, I do not think my first notion would 
be that they implied that He would descend from that 
state — that He would assume again the conditions and 
limitations of the one which He had left. The favourite 
scriptural analogy of the sun coming forth out of his 
bridal chamber, after the dark night, would present itself 



300 THE UNVEILING OF CHRIST. 

as, at all events, much more obvious. No doubt a great 
many considerations might induce me to reject this sense 
and accept the other. I might find that express words 
in the New Testament or a general current of meaning 
obliged me to take up with the more difficult hypo- 
thesis. But, in fact, express words and the current of 
sense force me out of the difficult hypothesis into the 
natural one. When St. Paul wishes to teach us about 
the coming or the judgment of Christ, the word he most 
commonly uses is d7rofca\vyfn$, or ' unveiling.' He looks 
forward to the unveiling of Christ. He bids His disciples 
in all the Churches live in the expectation of it. Or else 
he speaks of fyavepcocris — l a manifestation ' — as in the pas- 
sage I referred to just now, and as in that celebrated pas- 
sage in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Komans, 
where he describes the whole Creation as looking for- 
ward to deliverance from its travail at the manifestation 
of the sons of God. Each of these words, especially the 
first, receives the greatest illustration from the Apostle's 
own history. Whenever he gives the story of his con- 
version, he describes it as an unveiling of Christ to 
his bodily eye ; when he lays open the principle and 
meaning of his conversion, he represents it as the reveal- 
ing or unveiling of Christ in him. This idea, in these 
two different aspects of it, therefore, possessed his whole 
mind, and penetrated his teaching. His Gospel to 
men was a manifestation or revelation of Christ to them, 
as one who had proved himself to be their Lord, by 



THE DAT OF CHRIST. 301 

entering into their death, and by redeeming them from 
their tyrants. His assurance to each man was, that if 
he yielded to his Deliverer, and struggled against all 
that were trying to enslave him, Christ's power and 
presence would be revealed to him more every day. His 
hope for the world was, that Christ would in due time 
reveal himself completely as its Conqueror and King, 
and would bring all men to see that His universe was 
built on truth and righteousness. In strict accordance 
with this teaching, he uses ■ day ' to express the 
coming or revelation of Christ ; ' day' being taken, as 
the reader will perceive if he turns to the thirteenth 
chapter of the Epistle to the Komans, or to the fifth 
chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in 
opposition to night. Hereby he explains that use of the 
words 'human day,' to which I referred before, as express- 
ing the judgment passed by men upon himself; hereby 
he brings forth the full force and intention of that phrase 
which recurs so continually in the prophets of the Old 
Testament — ' The day of the Lord.' 

And there is this further — I think, quite unspeakable 
— benefit arising from his use of this form of expression. 
Instead of allowing us to dream of a final judgment, 
which shall be unlike any other that has ever been in 
the world, he compels us to look upon every one of 
what we rightly call 'God's judgments' as essentially 
resembling it in kind and principle. Our eagerness to 
deny this doctrine — to make out an altogether peculiar 



302 CHRIST COMING IN GLORY. 

and unprecedented judgment at the end of the world — 
has obliged us, first, to practise the most violent out- 
rages upon the language of Scripture, insisting that 
words cannot mean really what, according to all ordi- 
nary rules of construction, they must mean. Secondly, 
it has obliged us to treat with most especial contumely 
that solemn discourse of our Lord with his disciples 
when they showed Him the buildings of the Temple, 
and almost to deny His assertion that that generation 
should not pass till all the things he spoke of were 
fulfilled ; though he adds to it a sentence which might 
have made us serious in our belief of Him, if anything 
could: — 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
words shall not pass away.' Thirdly, as I hinted when 
I was alluding to this subject in connexion with the 
doctrine of the Resurrection, it has driven us into the 
perilous notion that we are only using metaphors when 
we speak of Grod as coming forth to judge the world in 
any crises of war or revolution. Certainly the Bible 
justifies that language, as not metaphorical, but most 
real. It speaks of all such crises as ' days of the Lord.' 
The ' coming ' of the Apostles' Creed, and the ' com- 
ing again ' of the Nicene Creed, must both indicate, if 
we derive our interpretation of them from the Scriptures, 
not that Christ will resume earthly conditions, or will 
take a throne in some part of this earth, but that He 
will be manifested as He is. The Nicene phrase, 
' coming again in glory,' which is taken from our Lord's 



FALSE IDEA OF JUDGMENT. 303 

own words, l The Son of man shall come in the glory 
of His Father, and of the holy angels,' seems expressly 
intended to guard against the notion that He should be 
invested with some of those vulgar ensigns of royalty 
which the sense-bound Jew supposed were needful to 
make Him a King, while He proved Himself to be one 
by healing the sick, and casting out devils. In our day, 
many of those who are most busy in the study of pro- 
phecy, complain of the Creeds, because they do not set 
forth, distinctly, their notion of a second coming of Christ 
to reign on the earth, but only speak of a judgment of 
quick and dead. I can sympathise, to a considerable 
extent, with their feelings, though I am convinced that 
the Creeds are right, and that they are very wrong. 

If the belief of a judgment takes the form, which it cer- 
tainly has taken in the minds of many of us ; if we look 
upon it only as something exceedingly terrible, which we 
are to set before our hearers when all ordinary resources 
of argument and rhetoric have failed, — when we can no 
longer move them by any testimonies we bear concern- 
ing the mercy of God or His redeeming Love ; if the 
thought of Christ as a judge is one which we are 
to shrink from, though we may find satisfaction in 
thinking of Him as a Saviour — then it is, indeed, utterly 
unintelligible why the writers of the Old Testament 
should so continually call upon God to arise and judge 
the earth ; why this should be the great burthen of their 
prayers, the ultimate point of their hopes ; and why the 



304 THE SECOND COMING. 

writers of the New Testament should exhort their dis- 
ciples to lift up their heads, and to desire, above all 
things, the Kevelation of Jesus Christ. To escape from 
this amazing contradiction, it has been natural for men to 
invent a theory and say, ' He is coming, but not only 
for this end, not first for this end. He is coming to 
reign over His saints — to give them rest from their 
enemies ; then the judgment of the world will follow.' 
It is better, I think, that men should cherish this belief, 
than that they should contemplate Christ as one who has 
saved heretofore, but is coming hereafter only to punish 
and condemn. For though some connect no better 
thoughts with this faith than the expectation of their 
own supremacy — and from such supremacy, Good 
Lord! deliver Thy bleeding earth: no tyranny that 
has ever existed upon it, would be so godless and so 
intolerable — there a?e numbers of true-hearted men, 
who rejoice in it only because it is identified in their 
minds with the victory of Christ over what is evil, 
with the establishment of His gracious dominion over 
all people. Such men felt themselves tied and bound 
by the notion of the religious world, that Christ had 
taken the nature of man, and died on the Cross only to 
save a few elect souls. They were sure that He must 
intend to bless mankind, to redeem the earth. Most 
glorious conviction, which no Creeds that men have 
ever framed, must tempt us to part with, for the Bible 
witnesses of it in every page; the truth and love 



THE CREEDS SPEAK OF A REIGNING KING. 305 

of God are involved in our holding it fast! But the 
Creeds differ in one respect from the supporters of 
this pre-millennial Advent. They teach us that 1800 
years ago, He who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, 
asserted and proved that He was the Lord of man ; that 
while the Jews were confounding a real king with an 
emperor clothed in purple, He demonstrated wherein 
kingship consists, and what are the highest powers which 
belong to it. A creed that speaks of a Son of God and 
a Son of Man, has no need to tell us — could not tell us 
without contradicting all its other statements, — that at 
some distant day He will assume an authority which 
He has never exercised yet. But it may tell us, it 
should tell us, that He who sat as a King, judged as a 
King, when the city and temple of Jerusalem fell, and 
the old world passed away with a great noise ; Pie 
who sat as a King, and judged as a King, when the 
mightiest empire the world had- ever seen was broken 
in pieces by a stone cut out of the mountain without 
hands ; He who has been confessed as a King by all the 
most civilized nations of the Western world, in whose 
Name kings have reigned and decreed justice ; He who 
has been proving that the powers which they used 
were His, by sweeping away dynasties, and putting 
down nations, the cup of whose iniquities was full ; 
He from whom all that has been righteous, gracious, 
gentle, orderly, civilized in the economy of nations, 
families, churches, has come; He against whom all 

x 



306 AND OF A KING WHO SHALL JUDGE. 

that lias been cowardly, cruel, slavish, superstitious in 
that economy, has been rebelling, — will most assu- 
redly be manifested, not in some little obscure corner 
of the earth, where pilgrims may go to look for Him, 
but as the lightning shineth from the one end of 
heaven to the other ; will be manifested, not changed 
and shrivelled from the crucified, risen, ascended Lord, 
to the miserable Caesar the Jews fancied Him ; but 
' coming as He went,' in the glory of His Father, so that 
every eye may see Him, so that every king, and judge, 
and priest, who has professed to rule or teach by His 
authority or for Him, shall be forced to own to himself 
and to the universe, whether he has been working 
truth or a lie ; whether he has been serving Christ, or 
Mammon, or himself; whether he has bowed down to 
the judgment and opinion of any public, religious or 
secular, or has walked as a child of the day in that 
light which lighteneth every man who does not choose 
the darkness. Surely a sound creed should tell us 
this, and should therefore convey to us the needful 
assurance and comfort, that all events have been work- 
ing under a divine guidance to a divine issue; that 
nothing which has been good can ever perish; that 
nothing which is evil can abide in that kingdom of 
righteousness, and truth, and peace, which is the king- 
dom of God and of His Son, and therefore can have 
no end. 

In spite of my conflict with the Idealists in my last 



HOW TO KEEP BAD MEN IN AWE. 307 

Essay, I am quite prepared to bear the charges that 
I have now been defending an ideal, and not an actual, 
judgment day, and that I confound the spiritual king- 
dom of Christ with His reign over the earth. I can only 
answer, as I have answered before, that I have found 
the current notions of a judgment, not exactly ideal, but 
exceedingly fantastic, figurative, inoperative, and that I 
have tried to ascertain whether Scripture does not give 
us the hint of something more practical and more 
substantial. If the popular notion on this subject is 
thought necessary to produce terror in the minds of 
thieves and vagabonds, I own that I am ideal enough 
to think the constabulary force a more useful, effectual, 
and also a more godly instrument. That does assert 
the existence of an actual present justice ; that does 
awaken in the consciences of evil men the sense of a 
law, which never loses sight of them, and may find 
out their darkest deeds ; that holds out to their merely 
animal nature, which requires such discipline, the pro- 
spect of a. sure and speedy punishment. If, again, the 
popular notion on this subject is wanted as an influence 
to act habitually on the lives of ordinary worldly men, 
and it is alleged that I have substituted for it the 
notion of a mysterious judgment, of which it is im- 
possible that such men can make any account, — then 
I reply, that it is precisely this kind of mysterious 
judgment which these men do recognise, and to which 
they pay habitual homage under the name of Public 



308 WORLDLY MEN, EELIGIOUS MEN. 

Opinion. But if you require this popular notion for 
the sake of religious men, or of those who are looking 
forward to some great improvement in the consti- 
tution of the world, then I say it is quite clear that 
such men are not in the least satisfied with it, but are 
inclined rudely to discard it. Such men demand for 
themselves an habitual government, inspection, judg- 
ment, reaching to the roots of their heart and will ; such 
men demand for the earth some complete deliverance 
from all that denies it and sets it in rebellion against a 
true and righteous King. The religious men must have 
a kingdom over their own spirits ; do not they see that 
only such a kingdom can be of any worth to any human 
being whatsoever ? Has not Christ claimed to be King- 
over both the spirits and bodies of men? over their 
bodies, because over their spirits ; over all things what- 
soever, because over the creature to which all things are 
put in subjection. Do we need a return to the lowest 
Judaism, the lowest Heathenism, in our notions of the 
relation between spirit and matter, the eternal and the 
temporal ? Do we not require a redemption of all that 
is visible and temporal from its changeable acci- 
dents ; a judgment and separation which shall come 
from the Kevelation of Him who has redeemed and 
glorified our whole humanity, between that in us which 
is His, and that which we have contracted by turning 
away from Him ? 



USE OF THE WOEDS OF THE CREED. 309 

I do not intend these Essays as a commentary on 
either of our Creeds. We have, I suspect, more com- 
mentaries on them than we want. In most cases, I have 
preferred to take my titles from popular and recognised 
names of doctrines, not to express them in the words of 
our formularies. I have spoken of the Incarnation, of 
the Atonement, of Justification by Faith ; not of Christ 
being conceived by the Holy Ghost, or born of the 
Virgin Mary, or suffering under Pontius Pilate. For 
my object has been to examine the language with 
which we are most familiar, and which has been open 
to most objections, especially from Unitarians. Inspect- 
ing the Conception, I was purposely silent ; not because 
I have any doubt about that article or am indifferent to 
it, but because I believe the word ' miraculous,' 1 which 
we ordinarily connect with it, suggests an "untrue mean- 
ing ; because I think the truth is conveyed to us, most 
safely, in the simple language of the Evangelists ; and 
because that language, taken in connexion with the 
rest of their story, offers itself, I suspect, to a majority 
of those who have taken in the idea of an Incarnation, 
as the only natural and rational account of the method 
by which the eternal Son of God could have taken 
human flesh. 

But I have deviated from this practice in three cases. 
I have used the express words of the Creed as the text 
of my remarks upon the Resurrection, the Ascension, and 
the Judgment. I have done so, perfectly well knowing 



310 TENETS AND CREEDS. 

that I am laying myself open to the displeasure, not 
only of the Unitarians, but of the other Dissenters, who 
would have a much better opinion of me, if I had de- 
fended the same principles without appealing to what 
they consider dry and worn-out documents. 

I do not know whether I can find a better opportunity 
than this for addressing myself directly to the feelings 
of Unitarians on this point. They have a great horror 
of a Creed. But tenets they must have. The other 
Dissenters have a great many. Their list, they boast, 
is reasonably small. The tenet of a Judgment to come, 
or Resurrection of the just and unjust, however, is 
included among them. I do not know whether they 
very distinctly define their opinions on this subject ; but 
a respectable, well-conditioned Unitarian would be very 
sorry if his orthodox neighbour supposed they were 
widely at variance upon it. I conclude, therefore, that 
the same vague, superstitious apprehension, which I 
have said that we derive from Heathenism, he must 
have derived from it also. The sense of a judgment to 
come is so kindred to our nature, so rooted in our nature, 
that we must hold it under one form or another. The 
old Minos form, or one that is akin to it, will be the 
form which this tenet assumes so long as it is merely a 
tenet. What I contend is, that it assumes a higher, 
nobler, more practical form when, ceasing to be a tenet, 
it becomes part of a Creed. When it is viewed as 
one of the acts of a living Person, a Son of Man, and a 



THE A FORTIORI ARGUMENT. 311 

Son of God, then its coating of superstition falls off from 
it: it becomes identified with the greatest triumphs 
that humanity has yet won ; with its present struggles, 
with its most glorious hopes. 

I submit this remark to the earnest consideration 
of all classes of Unitarians, but especially of those 
who are becoming discontented with the tenets of 
their forefathers. They very naturally argue in this 
way, — 'We cannot bear the yoke which is upon our 
necks already. You would put a heavier one upon 
them. We have been beaten with rods; you would 
beat us with scorpions.' The other Dissenters press the 
same argument upon their disciples : ' You complain of 
us for compelling you to accept dogmas which you do 
not feel to be reasonable, nay, even for preventing you 
from appealing to Scripture against them, because, after 
a congregation or school has accepted a certain interpre- 
tation of Scripture, it is bound by that. What would 
become of you, then, if you were connected with a 
Church which formally and avowedly holds its members 
to a certain Creed ? ' I am not careful to answer this 
argument. I am a very bad proselytizer. If I could 
persuade all Dissenters to become members of my Church 
to-morrow, I should be very sorry to do it ; I believe 
the chances are, they might leave it the next day. I do 
not wish to make them think as I think. But I want 
that they and I should be what we pretend to be, and 
then I doubt not we should find that there is a common 



312 THE OPPRESSION OF TENETS. 

ground for us all far beneath our thinkings. For trutli I 
hold not to be that which every man troweth, but to be 
that which lies at the bottom of all men's trowings, that 
in which those trowings have their only meeting point. 
But what I cannot and would not do, I believe, the 
experience of a great many Dissenters will do for 
them. They will be driven to Creeds by their weari- 
ness of tenets. They will find that they are at the 
mercy of every tyrannical congregation, of every dog- 
matist who rules a school, or of the public opinion of 
the sect which rules him. They will be compelled to 
ask, ' How does this happen ? Is there no escape from 
these oppressive judgments of human beings — no escape, 
but into absolute doubt and denial ? not even an escape 
into them, — for what intolerant dogmatists there are 
among doubters and deniers ! ' If they want freedom 
for their reason and wills, the old Creeds speak of One 
who came to deliver them. If they feel that the lan- 
guage of Scripture cannot be tied down by the language 
of a formula, Creeds oblige us to look out of themselves 
to some book which shall unfold the person and the. acts 
of Him of whom they are bearing witness. They never 
can put themselves in the place of our reason or of 
Scripture, till their words are perverted, and the sense 
of them contradicted. Why there should be such docu- 
ments in the world, I can explain no more than I can 
explain why any part of the order of Nature should 
exist, or why it should be in harmony with any other 



god's methods. 313 

part. I find it so. I give God thanks that it is so. I 
hope, in the day when He is revealed, and we are all 
called to answer for the use or abuse we have made of 
His gifts, that He will enable us to enter more fully 
into this and many other mysteries of His government, 
which I understand most imperfectly, but which have 
helped me to understand myself. 



ESSAY XIII. 



ON INSPIRATION. 

Any Clergyman who ventures to write on Inspiration, 
will be asked whether he is prepared to defend the 
popular views on that subject. If not, all his more 
judicious friends will advise him to be silent. He may 
injure his own reputation ; he may do what is much 
worse, — he may injure the faith of his countrymen and 
countrywomen. 

I cannot undertake to defend the popular views 
upon this or any other subject. First, I find it very 
difficult to ascertain what they are. What is called a 
popular view expands or contracts much at the pleasure 
of writers in newspapers and reviews. It appears to be 
exceedingly definite; you approach it, it has almost 
vanished. Popular notions have a considerable vigour 
for purposes of attack. They can be used with great 
effect against a supposed enemy of the faith. They 
only fail when you want them for use and comfort. 
They are full of warmth and fervour on the platform, 



POPULAR NOTIONS; ARE THEY POPULAR? 315 

in the closet they are as cold as ice. They stir up all 
the elements of strife and bitterness in the natural heart ; 
I do not find that they stir the spirit to any energetic 
action for God or man. Next, what are called popular 
notions answer, it seems to me, very ill to their name. 
They do not come from the people, they do not touch 
the hearts of the people. They are not like old, racy, 
homely proverbs, which embody so much of common, 
and therefore so much of genuine, feeling. They do 
not call forth any hearty, intelligent response when they 
are proclaimed among simple men who work with their 
hands. There is a sickly perfume about them, which 
denotes them not to have been nursed in the open air, 
but in flower-pots. The seeds of them may have been 
sown in the study, but they have ripened in the 
boudoir ; their greatest exposure has been in crowds, in 
which there is breath enough of some kind, but which 
the breath of heaven is not suffered to visit. And 
lastly, adherence to these popular notions is, I think, 
incompatible with a strict adherence to those Creeds 
which we solemnly confess, still more incompatible with 
a continual and direct appeal to the Bible, as a guide 
and an authority. I have explained why I think 
so in other cases ; some of the popular notions about 
Inspiration, instead of being an exception to either 
remark, offer, I suspect, the most striking illustrations 
of both. 

What is said about the danger to reputation is per- 



316 REPUTATION AND USEFULNESS. 

fectly true ; every one should consider it for himself. A 
man trembles for his wealth in proportion to the in- 
security of his investment ; the miser, who has been 
afraid to deposit it anywhere but in some chest or 
cupboard within his own reach, has the best reason of 
all for trembling. The religious world has a painful 
feeling that it has been hoarding up treasures for itself, 
and has not been rich towards God ; therefore it is con- 
tinually in dread of burglars and pickpockets. Let it 
use all precautions ; let it prove how free it is from the 
maxims of the ordinary world, by banishing trust 
and cultivating universal suspicion. All of us like its 
smiles, dread its frowns. We shall take great pains to 
secure one, and avert the other, if there is no smile that 
we care for more, no frown which we count more ter- 
rible. But many of us persuade ourselves, all of us 
have probably at one time yielded to the opinion, that 
reputation is necessary for the sake of usefulness. Every 
hour, I think, will show us more and more that the 
concern about reputation is the great hindrance to use- 
fulness ; that if we desire to be useful, we must struggle 
against it night and day. 

That thought suggests the really great argument 
against meddling with this subject of Inspiration ; we 
may injure the faith of our brothers and sisters. A 
most potent reason for taking some course in reference 
to it ; whether silence is that course, they may be able 
to decide who know something of the present feeling of 



DUTY OF SPEAKING ON THIS SUBJECT. 317 

different classes of Englishmen. Can yon prevent any 
set of men, nay, any man or woman, from knowing that 
this question has been stirred ? Do not those who lay 
down theories of Inspiration, and denounce others for 
not acquiescing in them, proclaim that fact aloud ? Is 
it not true, as these persons affirm so constantly, that 
the faith of our countrymen, as well as of other Euro- 
peans, in the Bible, is shaken already ? Are there not 
very clear evidences in their restless eagerness to get all 
objections put down, that their own is feeble and totter- 
ing? Is it not a duty which we owe to those who 
confess their doubts, which we owe quite as much to 
those who are trying to hush their doubts by making a 
noise, not to avoid the subject, but to face it, and to 
express ourselves upon it with as much frankness, as 
little ambiguity, as possible? To avoid the charge of 
ambiguity, of wilfully concealing some opinion which 
it would be inconvenient to express, is impossible. No 
one who has had the slightest experience will expect 
to do that. The most vehement champion of modern 
theories about the Inspiration of the Bible — the most 
passionate denier of its Inspiration — will agree in de- 
claring that any person who refuses the shibboleths of 
either is tampering with his conscience, and does not 
mean what , he says. They are perfectly entitled to 
their opinion ; their harmony upon one point, while 
they agree on no other, will be a decisive proof with 
many that they are right. Those who try to disturb so 



318 DANGER OF REPETITIONS. 

fixed a conviction, will always repent of their pains, and 
will find that the argument, — probably, which is much 
more precious, the temper — they have expended, has 
brought no calculable return. The utmost any one can 
dream of or should desire is, that his sincerity should 
be tried by his peers; that is to say, those who have 
felt these difficulties, and have sought, or still seek, a 
solution of them, not by men of another and altogether 
superior race, who are quite above human dangers and 
human sympathies, and are able to look down upon us 
from a region of self-satisfied, untroubled orthodoxy, or 
from a region which, being exactly antipodal to this, 
resembles it in temperature, the region of self-satisfied, 
untroubled unbelief. 

The only legitimate reason which can deter a person 
who has spoken or written much on Theological subjects, 
from entering on this, is, that he must almost necessarily 
have handled it before. The question of Inspiration 
touches so nearly upon all the thoughts with which men 
in this day are occupied, that at whatever point one 
comes into contact with those thoughts, it must be en- 
countered. The fear of repeating the same propositions 
again and again, is one that besets every one who 
tries to express convictions which are very sacred to 
him, and which he thinks his contemporaries have as 
much right in as he has. As he knows only common- 
places, and cares for nothing else, he cannot deal in 
novelties. But he must be conscious how much common- 



NECESSITY FOE THEM. 319 

places lose their force, and are mistaken for the idio- 
syncrasies of a particular mind, when they come forth 
frequently clothed in the phrases and forms which edu- 
cation or circumstances have made habitual to him. The 
dread of giving them merely a personal character, grows 
with his belief that they are truths for mankind. But 
however justifiable this feeling is, it must often yield to 
other considerations. A man will not understand what 
your convictions are, till you have put them in various 
lights ; till you have given him an opportunity of apply- 
ing various tests to them. It is not enough to treat of 
any great subject which an age is busy with, collate- 
rally; you must speak of it directly, grapple with the 
very words and forms in which people are wont to see it 
exhibited; else they will fancy that you and they are not 
intending the same thing. It is better to run the risk of 
a hundred repetitions, (which after all, not fifty or twenty 
persons may be aware of,) than to omit an opportunity 
when it offers, of relieving the conscience of a fellow - 
creature of some distressing bondage, or of protesting 
against some unrighteous attempt to keep it in prison.* 

* Not at all tliat I may oblige any reader (which I could not do if 
I would) to look into books which he may never have heard of, but 
simply that any one who pleases may have an opportunity of proving 
either that I have merely said again here what I have said before, or 
that I have said something altogether inconsistent with that, I would 
mention that I have alluded to the subject of Inspiration in a chapter 
on the Bible, in a book called 'The Kingdom of Christ,' which was 
published many years ago, more recently in a Sermon on the Psalms, 
contained in a volume on the Prayer Book, and in a Sermon on the 



320 GREEK INSPIRATION. 

I shall therefore fix my thoughts on the word Inspi- 
ration : our disputes are emphatically about the word. 
They are not less real for that. They point to facts and 
to substances ; but the best way of getting at these, and 
of coming to understand what we mean ourselves and 
what others mean, is to examine our uses of the name 
which we feel to be so sacred. 

1. We find the singers of the old world asking some 
divine power to inspire them. In the last age this 
language of theirs was not much heeded. It had been 
so much abused by the vulgarest writers who adopted 
classical fashions (I should be scarcely correct in saying 
classical forms), that it was supposed never to have had 
any signification. We have learnt to do more justice to 
the men whom we profess to admire. We feel that they 
would be worthy of no admiration, that they could not 
have won any, if they had not been simple and sincere. 
If they were merely using a trade phrase when they 
asked a Muse or a God to teach them, they must have 
had the fate of similar traders in later times. The rest 
of their speech is genuine and transparent ; this part of 

character of Balaam, in a volume on the Old Testament. I should not 
have spoken of some still more casual references to it, in a book on the 
Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament, published this year, if a 
particularly kind critic in the Nonconformist, for whose commendations, 
and still more for whose friendly reproofs, I desire to express my 
gratitude, had not called upon me to develop more clearly my hints, 
and to state my whole mind on the subject of Inspiration. I would 
request him to accept this Essay as an answer to that courteous 
challenge. 



THE BIBLE. EELIGIOUS MEN. 321 

it cannot be less so. It must express, not their loosest 
convictions, but their strongest. 

2. But whatever force we allow to this sense of the 
word, are we to suppose it has any even the slightest 
relation to the sense in which religious men speak of the 
Inspiration of the Bible? A number of voices all 
around us are saying, ' There is no real distinction 
between these books and any others. Inspiration is 
predicable of both, in the same sense. It can be 
but a question of degree, and therefore if you feel 
yourselves at liberty to exercise all kind of criticism 
upon the methods, principles, and authority of the one, 
you cannot fairly debar yourself or any one else from 
the same liberty in respect of the other.' We hear 
again a number of voices saying, ' You exercise that 
liberty at your peril. The Bible must be looked upon 
as the inspired book. To put it on the same ground 
with any other, is to deprive us of all foundation for 
our faith now, for our hopes in the world to come.' 

3. But again : religious men, the most earnestly re- 
ligious men, speak of themselves as taught, actuated, 
inhabited by a Divine Spirit. They declare that they 
could know nothing of the Scriptures except they were 
under this guidance. Is this the Inspiration which we 
attribute to the writers of the Old and New Testament, 
or is that different from it in kind ? 

4. A number of religious teachers actually claim 
to be inspired men, and circles of admiring disciples 

Y 



322 FANATICS. THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 

"believe them ; nay, crowds run after them, in the faith 
that they have a divine commission. Here is another 
fact which well deserves to be examined, a very serious 
fact indeed. It is one which the peremptory decrees 
of our schools have certainly not cleared up. They 
have not prevented the fanatics from appearing by their 
maxim respecting inspiration. They have not done 
much to weaken or to explain their influence. If fana- 
ticism is to be checked, we must understand ourselves 
a little better about its nature and cause. 

5. But the Church of England, which many religious 
people say is not spiritual enough, whose sons boast 
that it is expressly opposed to fanaticism, has used this 
very word ' Inspiration,' and has claimed it for these 
sons, apparently in a fuller, larger sense than either of 
the classes to which I have last referred. On the Fifth 
Sunday after Easter, we ask ' Him from whom all good 
things do come, that by His holy inspiration we may 
think those things that be good, and by His merciful 
guiding may perform the same.' Every Sunday morn- 
ing, and on every Festival-day, we ask, in our Communion 
Service, that i the thoughts of our hearts may be cleansed 
by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that we may 
perfectly love God, and worthily magnify His name.' 
Here are petitions which concern not a few specially 
religious men or some illuminated teachers, but the 
whole flock; to say the least, all the miscellaneous 
people who are gathered together in a particular con- 



ST. PAUL IN GKEECE. 323 

gregation. Are we paltering with words in a double 
sense? When we speak of Inspiration do we mean 
Inspiration ? When we refer to the Inspiration of the 
Scriptures in our sermons, ought we to say, ' Brethren, 
we beseech you not to suppose that this Inspiration at all 
resembles that for which we have been praying. They 
are generically, essentially unlike. It is blasphemous to 
connect them in our minds ; the Church is very guilty 
for having suggested the association.' These are the 
questions we have to discuss ; let us not shrink from 
them, or dispose of them lightly and frivolously, as if the 
hearts of tens of thousands were not interested in them. 

1. When St. Paul came into the different cities of 
Greece, he found men whose traditions told them of an 
Inspiration, which poets, prophets, priestesses, received 
from some divine source. These traditions had facts 
for their basis. Men were actually seen to be carried 
far above the level of their ordinary thoughts ; they 
spoke as they did not speak when they were buying 
and selling ; their words entered into other men's minds 
and worked mightily there. There was no denying 
this ; the experience of men established it beyond all 
controversy. And I think the conscience of men, ex- 
pressed in these traditions, was entitled to bear its 
testimony as well as their experience. That conscience 
said, i This power is something which we cannot measure 
and reduce under rules. It works in us, but it is above 
us. We may in some sort control its exercises, but we 



324 CHARACTER OF HIS TEACHING. 

are the subjects of it. It must come from some higher 
source. A God must have imparted it to us.' 

The next and more awful question was, ' What God, 
what is his name f ' When they tried to consider this 
question, a number of new facts forced themselves upon 
their observation. A man under the influence of some 
extraordinary afflatus, might be raised to a higher and 
nobler state, might be an inventor of arts, might over- 
come his inclinations to pleasure, might do heroic acts 
for the benefit of the world, might have intuitions of the 
future. Or he might be merely inebriated, maddened, 
might exhibit wild contentions, might, in the worst and 
grossest sense, lose the mastery of himself. The theory 
of a divine Inspirer must, they thought, explain both 
these discordant experiences. Every one who reflects 
upon the legends which cluster about the name of Dio- 
nysus, and the various grotesque forms which embodied 
them for the eye, will understand how the heart and ima- 
gination of the Greek were exercised by this problem. 

How might we suppose that St. Paul would act — how 
do we know that he did act — when he brought his Gos- 
pel to a people with these notions and traditions ? If 
he had told them that all the thoughts of their ances- 
tors were unmeaning and ridiculous, he would have 
found a willing and prepared audience in Athens and 
Corinth. Their sophists had told them so before ; the 
inclination of their minds was to accept the statement. 
They would indeed have continued to bow down to all 



EFFECT OF IT*. 325 

manner of idols; why not? they were beautiful objects; 
worship might do them some good; who could tell? 
' The people certainly needed such images ; it was 
philosophical to humour the vulgar taste ; a very high 
philosophy might see a meaning in it.' But St. Paul did 
not take this course. The one which he did take must 
have tended to awaken that old faith out of its sleep ; not 
to smother it in its sleep. For he spoke of gifts of heal- 
ing ; gifts of speech ; gifts of government. He spoke of 
these gifts as proceeding from a Person. He spoke of 
His presence as the great gift of all. He spoke of that 
gift as coming to men, because a Man had appeared in 
the world, and had ascended on high, who was the Son 
of God. Such language could not but associate itself 
with all the thoughts which they had before of Inspi- 
rations and an Inspirer. We know that it did, for most 
of the confusions in the Corinthian Church arose from the 
old dreams of a Dionysiac inspiration. And how are 
the two distinguished ? There would have been nothing 
to distinguish them, there would have been no witness 
against idol worship or demon worship, if St. Paul had 
said, ' Those powers which you referred to Dionysus, or 
Apollo, or iEsculapius, are not what we are permitted 
and enabled to exercise ; ' for the understanding could 
still have demanded, * What then is the origin of those f ' 
But if he was able to say, ' What you have attributed 
to a demon, to a being whom you have fashioned out 
of a set of phenomena which you could not account for, 



326 THE DlVlNE AND DEVILISH. 

I come to vindicate for the Father of Spirits, for the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;' this would indeed have 
"been the most triumphant testimony he could bear, that 
the reign of the old Gods was over, and that the one Lord 
who had spoken to a poor hand of exiles from Egypt, 
was now asserting His dominion over the world. And 
so — and only so — it would be apparent, why He who 
lifted men into a nobler and freer life, could not mean man 
to be the victim of a frenzy, or of mere animal impulses. 
The history which the Apostle told was the history of 
the gradual discovery of man's relation to God, and 
consequently of man's spiritual condition. That a 
Divine Spirit should come to meet and raise a spirit 
hard pressed with animal inclinations, to give it the 
power of maintaining its own position, of looking up to 
Him in whose likeness it was made, apart from whom 
it had no life, was so reasonable, was so necessary a 
corollary from the previous part of the message, that the 
heart of the hearers anticipated it, was eager to recog- 
nise it. But then whatever counteracted this influence, 
whatever led the animal to assert that supremacy to 
which it had been proved to have no claim, must be 
either the turbulent and rebellious movement of the 
lower nature, or the action of some evil power, speaking 
directly to the spirit and aiming to destroy it. 

The opposition between the divine and either the 
animal or the devilish, which had been confounded with 
it in the old mvthology, was manifested just in propor- 



THE SPECIAL AND GENEEAL. 327 

tion as those very powers and gifts, which man had felt 
before he could not ascribe to himself, were ascribed to 
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Order and Truth. But 
it is equally evident that there was another great and 
broad distinction between the old and new belief. The 
first had been partial, narrow, peculiar. It had tried to 
explain how extraordinary men, or men in some extra- 
ordinary crisis of their lives, were able to do strange 
acts, to speak unusual words. St. Paul's Gospel 
was human and universal. It explained indeed the 
influence of seers and prophets; it asserted the exist- 
ence of special endowments ; it put all honour upon 
distinct callings. But first of all, it asserted that the 
Spirit was necessary for all human beings, and was 
intended for all. And this human gift it did not de- 
grade below the other, as being a secondary, inferior 
exhibition of that which the great man obtained in its 
highest form. The Divine Spirit, the Spirit of Love, 
who was promised to all, was described as the source 
and spring of those peculiar endowments which were 
given to this and that man as He willed. They 
were to esteem their gifts mainly as witnesses of His 
presence. 

2. But if St. Paul asserted that the inspiration which 
the Greeks had attributed to false Gods was derived 
only from the true, what kind of dignity did he claim 
for the inspiration of his own seers and prophets? I 
apprehend that he could say nothing more glorious for 



328 LAW BEFOEE INSPIRATION. 

them than this, that they had spoken as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost ; that they had consistently 
disclaimed all wisdom and power for themselves ; that 
they had been, in the most orderly and divine manner, 
preparing the way for that manifestation of Him which 
had been promised to their children, and had at length 
been granted. Inspiration was not the first idea in the 
mind of a Jew, as it was perhaps in that of a Greek. 
The Law took precedence of the Prophets ; the Covenant 
was before either. The Lord had said to Abram, ' Get 
thee out of thy father's house, to a land that I will show 
thee,' — had promised that in him and his seed the 
families of the earth should be blessed. The Lord 
had declared to Moses His great name, had sent him to 
be the deliverer of His people, had given them through 
him commandments, and statutes, and ordinances. The 
Righteous King and Judge, who claims men as His 
servants, who teaches them to judge between right and 
wrong, is revealed first. The prophet who speaks in 
His name is still mainly the witness of Unchangeable 
Right, and of judgments that shall distinguish between 
it and the wrong. And the Word, who comes to him, 
and speaks to him, makes him aware how he and his 
people are related to that Lord God whom the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain ; makes him understand that 
there is a King on the holy hill of Zion, One whom he 
can call his Lord, and to whom the Lord is saying, ' Sit 
Thou on my right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy 



THE PROPHETS' INSPIRATION. 329 

footstool.' The revelation of this mysterious Teacher, 
this Divine King, is what he looks for ; glimpses of the 
steps and method of His manifestation reveal themselves 
through his own sorrows and the trials of his country ; 
he is confident that some day God will be fully de- 
clared, and that in that clay man, His image, will attain 
his proper glory. 

But how is it that the prophet is able to enter into 
these divine communications? What is there in him 
different from other men which makes him capable of 
them? What mean these stirrings within him, this 
sense of a power which seems at times more than he 
can bear, this mighty influence to which he must yield, 
which does not suffer him to speak till it has humbled 
and crushed him ; which, when he does speak, makes 
him know that his words, though they have come out 
of the depths of his own heart, are the Lord's, and that 
they belong as much to all his countrymen as to him ? 
This is surely Inspiration. But who is the Inspirer? 
How can He be so near to him, to his own very self? 
For this power is not merely or chiefly one which 
elevates and transports. It does not merely take hold 
of some faculty or impart some energy. It carries on 
the most searching, intimate, terrible converse with him 
who uses the faculty, who wields the energies. 

The answer to this demand came gradually, slowly, like 
the answer to the other. St. Paul believed that it had come 
at last most effectually. John the Baptist preached of 



330 THE BAPTISM OP THE SPIRIT. 

repentance for the remission of sins. But he preached of 
One coming after him, that was before him, who should 
baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Jesus, 
Paul's companion tells us, had received the Holy Ghost 
in His baptism, when He was proclaimed to be the Son of 
God. In the power of that Holy Ghost He resisted the 
Tempter, healed the broken-hearted, preached deliver- 
ance to the captives, proclaimed the Jubilee of the Lord. 
Then when He was going away, He spoke of a Spirit 
of Truth whom He would send to His disciples from 
the Father, who would abide with them, who would 
bring all things to their remembrance — would show 
them plainly of the Father. He had spoken continually 
in His earlier discourses of a Father who was both His 
and theirs ; all these words seemed gathered up and in- 
tended to receive their interpretation in what He said 
to them now of a Comforter. The disciples were per- 
plexed. How could they have another to supply His place? 
How could He be with His Father, and yet manifest 
Himself to them ? What could He mean by saying that 
He and His Father would come to them, and abide 
with them ? He told them to wait for the promise of 
the Father ; then they would know what was now dark 
to them. When He had ascended, and had led them, by 
that strange discipline I spoke of in a former Essay, to 
believe that in some wonderful way they were even 
then to ascend with Him, and be with Him where 
He was, He again told them to wait; He could not 



THE REVELATION OF THE INSPIRER. 331 

satisfy their desire to know whether the kingdom would 
be at that time restored to Israel; He could only assure 
them that they should "be endued with powers from 
on high. On the Festival day, St. Luke says the 
sound of the mighty rushing wind was heard; the 
cloven tongues sat upon the Apostles ; they spoke as the 
Spirit gave them utterance ; the multitude heard them 
in their own tongues proclaiming the wonderful works 
of God. Herein St. Paul saw the revelation of Him who 
had inspired the Prophets ; the fulfilment of the divine 
promise; the assurance that the Father of all was indeed 
claiming the sons of men, Jews, Greeks, barbarians, as 
His children. So soon as he learnt the truth, he became 
the herald of a new dispensation. This manifestation of 
the Spirit was that which the world had been waiting 
for so long. He had taught prophets to speak, He had 
enabled them to suffer, He had given them glimpses of 
a glory which their children should see, in which they 
themselves should be sharers. Now it might be pro- 
claimed aloud. ' The Baptism which John foretold is 
for you all. " Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth 
the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, 
Father." All gifts ever bestowed upon prophets, were 
the gifts of a Father to His children, the foretastes of 
that adoption and emancipation which was awaiting 
men, when their teaching under the elements of the 
world should be completed. 

What a magnificent idea, then, must St. Paul have 



332 st. paul's views of the old testament. 

had of those books, which, in his Pharisaical days, had 
seemed to him merely objects of fear, and a kind of 
worship ; excuses for Jewish self-exaltation ! How every 
old teacher will have started into life, when he contem- 
plated him no longer as a mere utterer of dark sentences, 
which the Scribes copied out and made darker by their 
expositions, but as endued with that same Divine Spirit 
which was enabling him to be a teacher of the Gen- 
tiles ; of whom he could dare to say to each Church, 
' He dwells with you;' to each member of a Church, 
' He has made your body His habitation!' What a 
grand procession those old teachers formed, each one of 
whom was leading men onwards to that discovery of 
the Inspirer ! What was there in all the rest of the 
world together that could compare with them, not in 
their distinct worth alone or chiefly, but in their con- 
tinuity, their orderly succession, their harmony; their 
worth as witnesses to the divine method of government 
in their own day, a method which must be the same in 
all generations to come; their worth as foreseers of that 
which had now come to pass ! What would the history 
of the rest of the world be but a collection of inex- 
plicable fragments if there were not this revelation to 
unite them and make them a whole ! 

But if this was the effect of his New Testament 
wisdom, how must he have feared any relapse into that 
state of mind from which he had emerged ; how must 
he have dreaded it for his converts, and for those who 



THE EVANGELICAL PEOTEST. 333 

should come after them ! Can we conceive any view of 
the Holy Scriptures — either of those he had known from 
a child, or those he was contributing to form — which 
would have seemed to him more dreadful, than one 
which, under colour of exalting them, should set aside 
their own express testimony concerning the unspeakable 
gift which God had conferred on His creatures ? If he 
would have turned with indignation from those who, 
pretending to honour the Bible, forbid men to read it, 
lest it. should awaken those questionings in their hearts, 
which it is meant to awaken, and which a Church 
instead of stifling should desire to encounter, and be 
able to satisfy ; would he have felt less indignant with 
those who, talking of the Bible as their only religion, 
and only rule of life, prevent if from being either, by 
saying that its Inspiration has no relation to that of the 
writers whom it is intended to illuminate, to that of the 
human beings it is intended to educate and console? 

3. This Scribe notion of the Bible was stoutly 
resisted by the Evangelical teachers of the last age. 
Francke and Spener have been referred to again and 
again by their admirers in this country, as faithful 
witnesses against the hard German doctors of their 
day, who looked upon the Bible as a mere collection of 
dry facts and dogmas, and who supposed that it could 
be understood without the aid of such a Spirit as dwelt 
in the writers of it. Our own Yenns and Newtons 
took up the same language ; the orthodoxy as well as 



334 SUFFERERS OF TWO KINDS. 

the liberalism of their contemporaries was offensive to 
them, precisely because both seemed equally to separate 
the Bible from the conflicts and experiences of Christian 
men. The testimony which they bore, I hope, is not 
extinct, — has not merely given birth to a set of phrases 
about ' head knowledge,' or to charges of ' want of 
vital and experimental acquaintance with divine things,' 
which any one can learn by heart, and which may often 
be used most glibly by those who are half conscious 
that they have a very near and personal application, 
In solitary chambers, among bedridden sufferers, the 
words of these good men have still a living force. The 
Bible is read there truly as an inspired book ; as a book 
which does not stand aloof from human life, but meets 
it ; which proves itself not to be the work of a different 
Spirit from that which is reproving and comforting the 
sinner, but of the same. It is of quite infinite import- 
ance that the confidence in which these humble students 
read, should not be set at nought and contradicted by 
decisions and conclusions of ours. It is absolutely 
necessary that we should be able to say, that they are 
not practising a delusion upon themselves ; that they are 
not amiable enthusiasts ; that they are believing a truth 
and acting upon it. But we cannot say this if we must 
adopt the formulas, which some people would force upon 
us. Either we must set at nought the faith of those who 
have clung to the Bible, and found a meaning in it when 
the doctors could not interpret it, or we must forego the 



DOUBTERS. 335 

demand which we make on the consciences of young 
men, when we compel them to say that they regard the 
Inspiration of the Bible as generically unlike that which 
God bestows on His children in this day. 

I know well how this last remark will be met. ' Do 
you not know,' some one will say, ' that the simple 
Christians you speak of, have the most unfeigned, un- 
questioning reverence for the Bible ? do you not know, 
also, that those young men of whose consciences you are so 
tender, avoid explicit statements respecting the Inspi- 
ration of the Bible, precisely because they are full of 
neological doubts and theories about it, which never 
entered into the heads of the others, and would utterly 
shock them if they did ? What folly or dishonesty to 
compare cases so dissimilar!' Now I am perfectly ready 
to admit, that, in a great many cases, perhaps in most, 
scruples which may be called neological, are at the 
bottom of the objections which the younger members of 
Evangelical families make to the doctrines respecting the 
Inspiration of the Bible, which their elders require them 
to accept. But I venture to think, first, that it is neither 
foolish nor dishonest to protest against the invention of 
tests to meet a particular case, which — supposing they 
do accomplish their particular object, and supposing 
that is a good one — also may promote another which is 
decidedly and evidently bad. I should have thought 
that the history of heresies might have taught us that, 
whenever a dogma has been devised merely to fit and 



336 THEIR EDUCATION. 

contradict some denial which is prevalent, it has almost 
always been the parent of some other denial quite as 
dangerous. But secondly, I should like to be informed 
how these neological tendencies have arisen in persons 
apparently so well secured by their education against 
them. It seems to me that this is generally the history 
of their growth. These young men were informed early 
that no knowledge of the Bible could be had, unless 
Grod's Spirit illuminated the page and their hearts. It 
was intimated to them also, (or this was what they 
gathered from the lessons they received,) that they did 
not at present possess this illumination. In the mean- 
time they were instructed in what was called the ex- 
ternal evidence, which proved that these records were 
of divine authority. Some of this evidence might be 
good, such as would pass muster in any English court 
of justice ; some might be tolerable, such as would be 
listened to if there were nothing to overweigh it on the 
other side ; some was decidedly weak and worthless. But 
the best could not put in the least claim to authority ; 
it would have abandoned all its peculiar boast if it had. 
All was therefore open to legitimate examination and 
criticism ; that which could not hold water must give 
way ; that which was worthy would often be suspected 
for its sake. Very soon the book itself, the merits and 
dignity of which had been staked upon this issue, — which 
the youth had been distinctly told that he was not 
to receive, merely because his parents or his country 



MODE OF DEALING WITH DOUBTERS. 66 i 

received it, which he had been told also that he could not 
yet receive upon any distinct witness of his own spirit, 
sank nearly — never quite — to the level of the arguments 
by which it had been recommended to him. He dis- 
closes his perplexities, he asks whether this or that 
passage in the book is not less tenable than the rest: 
he is told that he must take all or none : the whole 
is inspired ; to doubt it is to renounce the Word of God, 
— to renounce God himself. Sharp, keen, suspicious 
eyes are fixed upon him ; questions are asked which he 
cannot answer ; the case is proved. He becomes what 
you said he was ; and I beg to know, Sir or Madam, who 
has made him so ? I am, therefore, bound for his sake, 
as well as for the sake of his more child-like sister or 
wife, solemnly to protest against the rule which you 
wish to enforce on this matter. The principles of both 
are equally injured by it. If you desire to defend the 
spiritual privileges of the one ; if you desire to make the 
other feel, as you may yet make him feel, that the Bible 
is his book. as it was his fathers', that it speaks to him as 
truly, as lovingly, as it did to them., that no modern 
wisdom will supply the place of it ; you must not begin 
by that inhuman, ungodly course of insisting that he 
should accept the whole book as divine or inspired, 
when he does not know, and you have not helped him 
to know, what divine or inspired means. You may 
show him that there is divinity here and inspiration 
there; you may show him this — if you acknowledge, 

z 



338 THE AKGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM. 

on the authority of the book you profess to take as your 
guide— that there is a Divine Word who is lightening 
him, that there is a Divine Spirit who is seeking to 
inspire him. You may then lead him gradually, with 
many tears and much joy, to trace that Word and 
that Spirit not only here and there, but connecting, 
reconciling those various documents which seemed to 
him so inconsistent with themselves, explaining the 
facts of the universe with which they seemed to be at 
war. Be sure, however, that before you can take one 
step in this course, you must give up the attempt to 
impose a theory of Inspiration on him, nay, you must 
very gravely consider whether the one which you hold is 
compatible with that belief in Inspiration which belonged 
to prophets and apostles. 

I foresee that some critic will say to me, ' It is a 
cunning method to put forward these young men, and 
to pretend so much sympathy with them. Every one 
can see that you are really pleading your own cause. 
You have some secret unbelief about the books of the 
Bible, which makes you shrink from this tenet of 
Inspiration. We are glad to know it. The screw 
should always be applied where there are any symptoms 
of tenderness or wincing.' 

I wish my friend the critic would look me as steadily 
in the face, while he is making these observations, as if 
he stood before me I would look him in the face while 
I replied to them. I would tell him that I am conscious 



ANSWER TO IT. 339 

of just as much, unbelief about the books of the Bible, as 
I am about the facts of nature and of my own existence. 
I am conscious of unbelief about those facts ; often- 
times they seem to me quite incredible. I overcome 
this unbelief, and acquire what I think is a truer state 
of mind, when I turn to the Bible as the interpretation 
of them. The more difficulties I have found in myself 
and the world, the more help has it been to me. 
I do not find the Bible the cause of my perplexities, 
but the resolver of them. Of course there are a mul- 
titude of things in it which I do not understand; 
a multitude more in myself which I do not understand. 
But this has been my experience hitherto, and each 
year, almost each day, that experience is strengthened. 
Instead, therefore, of wishing to get rid of those docu- 
ments which the traditions of my country teach me 
to hold divine, because they belong to some bygone 
condition of things with which modern civilization has 
nothing to do, I feel the necessity of them increasing 
with every, step which civilization takes, with every 
new complication of feelings and circumstances in 
which I am myself involved. Books of the Bible 
which were lying in shadow for me, in which I could 
see little meaning, have come forth into clearness, 
because I met with hard passages in myself or in 
society which I could not construe without their help. 
And I have found this to be the case more and more 
in proportion as I have rested my faith on the God 



340 FAITH IN GOD AND IN CONCLUSIONS. 

whom the Bible declares to me, and not upon my con- 
clusions respecting the authenticity of different hooks. 
These conclusions may be sound, — I hope they are ; 
but they may not be sound. My understanding is very 
liable to error; and how can those who require me 
to consider the Bible as alone free from error, encourage 
me, at the same moment, to transfer that immunity 
to myself? This they must do, if they will not let me 
first of all accept the canon of Scripture as given to 
me, and secondly, rise gradually to believe, not on the 
authority of any Samaritan woman or Church doctor, 
but because I have heard Christ for myself, speaking 
to me out of this book, and speaking to me in my heart, 
and know that He is indeed that Saviour who should 
come into the world.* 

* A distinction is often hinted at, sometimes formally taken, be- 
tween Facts and Doctrines. ' You may,' it is said, ' believe that the 
Spirit guides a man into a knowledge of principles. But do you accept 
the facts of the Bible? Do you look upon them as divinely com- 
municated to the seer ? ' Any one who considers doctrines as I have 
considered them in these Essays, finds it exceedingly hard to separate 
them from facts; doctrines and principles he supposes to be the 
meaning of facts. If, then, I am asked whether I receive the tran- 
scendant facts of Scripture, those which offer most occasion to dis- 
belief, I appeal to what I have written here. If I am asked whether I 
believe the ordinary facts of Scripture, e. g. that such a city was taken 
at such a time ? I answer, that when I find a man so free from biblical 
prepossessions as Niebuhr assuming Isaiah and Jeremiah to be better 
authorities about such facts than any he knew of, I am surprised that 
our divines and religious people should be so very eager to get con- 
firmation of the testimonies in sacred books from profane authorities, 
as if they felt insecure of them till then, — a sentiment I cannot the 
least understand or share in ; that, believing the writers of the Bible to 



VEEBAL INSPIRATION. 341 

On his way to this discovery, a man may have to pass, 
as numbers have before him, through terrible struggles 
and contradictions of mind. But you believe it is true, 
do you not? You think God has revealed it, do you not? 
You believe He lives, do you not ? If so, He can per- 
haps take about as good care of His truth, His book, 
His creatures and the universe, as you or I can. He 
can teach us without a theory of Inspiration, which is 
taking the place, it is to be feared, in very many minds, 
not only of faith in Inspiration, but of faith in Him. 

With regard to the different forms in which this 
theory expresses itself, I care little about them. If any 
one likes to talk of a verbal Inspiration, if that phrase 
conveys some substantial meaning to his mind, by all 

have been possessed by the Spirit of Truth, I am sure they will have 
more shrunk from fictions, and have been more careful to avoid mixing 
them with facts, than other men ; that it seems to me far safer, more 
scriptural, more godly, to suppose tbey did take pains, and that the 
Spirit taught them to take pains, in sifting facts, than that they were 
merely told the facts ; that I most assuredly should not give up the 
faith in God which they have cherished in me, if I found they had 
made mistakes; and that I have too much respect and honour for 
those who use the strongest expressions about the certainty of every 
word in the Scriptures, to suppose that they would. I will not be- 
lieve any Christian man, even upon his own testimony, who tells 
me that he should cease to trust in the Son of God, because he 
found chronological or historical misstatements in the Scriptures, 
as great as ever have been charged against them by their bitterest 
opponents. If I did suspect him of such hollowness, I should pray 
for him that he might never meet with any travellers or philologers 
who confirmed the statements of Scripture ; none but such as denied 
them or mocked at them ; because the sooner such a foundation as 
this is shaken, the better it will be for him. 



342 FANATICS. 

means let him keep it. He cannot go further than I 
should, in calling for a laborious and reverent attention 
to the very words of Scripture, and in denouncing the 
unreasonable notion, that thoughts and words can be 
separated ; that the life which is in one must not pene- 
trate the other. If any one likes to speak of plenary 
Inspiration, I would not complain; I object to the Inspi- 
ration which people talk of, for being too empty, not for 
being too full. These forms of speech are pretty toys 
for those who have leisure to play with them, and if 
they are not made so hard as to do mischief, the use 
of them should never be checked. But they do not 
belong to business. They are not for those who are 
struggling with life and death ; such persons want, not 
a plenary Inspiration or a verbal Inspiration, but a book 
of Life ; and they will know that they have one when 
you have courage to tell them that there is a Spirit with 
them, who will guide them into all truth. 

4. ' But if these words are openly proclaimed, what a 
plentiful crop of ranters and fanatics shall we have ! 
What crowds will run after them ! for who then will 
have a right to deny their inspiration?' A dreadful 
prospect! But is it a prospect? Have we not the 
fanatics and ranters already? Do they not draw dis- 
ciples after them? You have tried to weaken their 
influence by telling them that the Bible was the Inspired 
book ; that it is utterly absurd and extravagant for men 
in these days to call themselves inspired; that the same 



HOPES DISAPPOINTED. 343 

course lias been tried in former times, and has always 
come to nought. There is great apparent justification for 
this method ; it has been used often by very ingenious 
and sagacious men, with whom it ought to have suc- 
ceeded, if it was to succeed. But it has not succeeded. It 
has not cured the immediate evil which it was meant to 
cure ; it has left the seeds which produced that evil, 
always ready for fresh germination. And what is worse, 
this kind of treatment has destroyed precious seeds, 
which God had planted in men's hearts, and which they 
cannot afford to lose. You long to expose the impostor, 
the mountebank, who is deceiving a number of poor 
simple souls. But do you desire that the earnest, cordial 
faith, which has been called forth in them, while they 
are following him, should be taken from them? Do you 
desire that those fervent hopes, kindled for the first time 
in men who have been crawling all their days on the 
earth and eating dust, should be put out for ever ? Do 
you think nothing of the desolation which they will feel, 
when they find that he in whom they trusted has failed 
them utterly, and that what looked the most real of 
all things, was but a dream? Oh! is there nothing 
dreadful in the unbelief, the prostration of soul, the 
wretchlessness of unclean living, which follows such 
disappointments and discoveries ? 

' But they must come,' you say, ' how can we help it?' 
We could have done this. We could have told the 
deceiver that he was not exaggerating in the least the 



344 THE TRUE INSPIRATION. 

blessings of which a man is capable, and which God is 
willing to bestow on him. We could have told him that 
instead of a mere power of utterance, which it is evident 
he possesses, and for which he will have to give an 
account, the Spirit who has endued him with that power 
is near him, claiming him as a servant ; near him, and 
near every one of those too whom he is making his 
tools. We might say to him, ' If you believe this, 
there will come into your mind such an awe, such a 
sense of the fearfulness of trifling with this gift and 
blessing, — there will come such a desire to learn, such 
a fear of the responsibility of ruling over other men, 
such a conviction that you can only do it without a 
crime, when you give up yourself to the Spirit of 
Truth, — that nothing will seem to you so great a reason 
for penitence and shame, as that you have dared to 
exalt yourself on the plea of possessing that, which 
if you had possessed it rightly, would have entirely 
humbled you.' And if with this, we teach the people 
that the Spirit of God has come down, not on the 
great prophet only, but for the whole flock of Christ, 
to keep them from pride and self-conceit and delusion, 
and to guide them into all truth, I believe we shall 
give them the lesson which they need, in order that 
the chaff in their minds may be separated from the 
wheat, and may be burned up. 

5. For this principle, we of the Church of England 
are, I conceive, laid under the most solemn obliga- 



THE THREE METHODS. J45 

tions by the collects I have quoted, and by the tenour 
of our prayers, which is in conformity with them, to 
bear steady witness. The function which our orthodox 
men in the last century claimed for us, of being wit- 
nesses against fanaticism, is a most honourable function. 
God grant that we may be able to fulfil it ! But we 
cannot fulfil it in the way they dreamed of — by setting 
at nought all belief in spiritual operations, by referring 
all that is spoken of them in Scripture to the age of 
the Apostles. That plan has been tried ; none ever 
failed so completely and shamefully. We cannot do 
it by the course which our modern evangelical school, 
renouncing the maxims of their forefathers, seem in- 
clined to recommend — the course of setting up the Bible 
as a book which encloses all that may lawfully be called 
Inspiration. That plan is under trial, and, if we may 
judge by present indications, it is likely to produce a 
general alienation from the Bible, a wide-spread unbe- 
lief in Christianity. There is another method : may we 
have faith to follow it out ! It is that of saying to our 
countrymen, of every order and degree, ' The Father of 
all has sent forth His Son, made of a woman, that you 
may receive the adoption of sons. He has baptized you 
with the Spirit of His Son : and that Spirit would be 
crying in your hearts, Abba, Father. That Spirit 
would be leading you into fellowship with all your 
brethren. That Spirit would be making you humble, 
teachable, courageous, free. That Spirit would claim 



346 THE POPULAK NOTIONS SEMI-UN1TAEIAN. 

all things for you ; common books and the chief book, 
^Nature and Grace, Earth and Heaven.' 

It may seem to some Unitarian listener, who had hoped 
that I was going to join him in cursing several of his 
enemies, that I have blessed them these three times. 
He might expect from me some more rational theory 
about Inspiration than that which is current among our 
Evangelical and High Church teachers. He might 
think my apparent indifference to their opinions pro- 
mising. But I have at last come to a conclusion which 
will strike him as far more distant from his own than 
theirs is. I have appeared to protest against current 
theories of Inspiration, because they fail to assert the 
actual presence of that Spirit, whom it has been one 
of the standing articles of his creed not to confess. 

I cannot deny this charge. I do think that our 
theories of Inspiration, however little they may accord 
with Unitarian notions, have a semi-Unitarian charac- 
ter ; that they are derived from that unbelief in the Holy 
Ghost which is latent in us all, but which was developed 
and embodied in the Unitarianism of the last century. 
I have not been able to conceal this opinion in the 
present case or in other cases. I have not tried to con- 
ceal it ; for I am persuaded that we must go further 
from Unitarianism, if we would embrace Unitarians ; 
that we shall never know them as brothers, or love 
them as brothers, till we bring out our own faith more 
fully and disengage it from some of the elements of 



YET UNFKIENDLY TO UNITARIANS. 347 

distrust which we, in imitation of them, have allowed 
to mingle with it. Especially do I look forward to this 
result, however distant and improbable it may seem, 
from a full assertion of that portion of our creed which 
refers to the person of the Comforter. I do see in that, 
such a bond of loving fellowship for all men — such 
a breaking down of sect-barriers — that I long to speak 
of it, even if it be in the most imperfect and stammering 
language, to those who have been divided from us. I 
have not entered upon that subject here. Till the ques- 
tion of Inspiration had been fairly considered, I saw no 
hope of being able to express my thoughts fully and 
clearly upon it : for nothing seems to me so dangerous, 
as that the Bible should be used to hinder the reception 
of a truth which can alone make its words intelligible, 
and, apart from which, its Inspiration, and all inspira- 
tion, is the dream of a shadow. 



ESSAY XIV. 

ON THE PERSONALITY AND TEACHING OF THE 
HOLY SPIRIT. 

I SUPPOSE there is nothing which is causing so much 
unbelief here and everywhere, as a comparison of the 
hopes which Scripture seems to hold out of the effects 
that should follow the revelation of Christ, with the 
history of the world since He appeared in it. I appre- 
hend this difficulty is felt much more strongly in our 
day than in former days. There are several reasons 
why it must be so. We have been led to consider the 
different portions of history more in relation to each 
other than our fathers did. The records of the old 
Pagan world have been brought side by side with those 
of the Christian Church. Great differences have been 
observed in them no doubt ; more differences than were 
perceived formerly. But though all new inquiries may 
show us more clearly what crimes, what contradiction 
of moral principles, what superstition existed in the 
countries whose literature we have been most taught to 



THE OLD AND NEW WORLD. 349 

prize, they show us also, that our ancestors were not 
mistaken, in speaking of the patriotism and nobleness of 
particular men in those countries, of the ideal which 
they set "before themselves, nay, of the homage whicli 
was paid to that ideal by the body of their countrymen, 
proving it to be national, not individual. What other 
conclusion does the history of the later world suggest ? 
There, too, is crime, contradiction of moral principles, 
fearful superstition. There, too, are facts which show 
that many have set before themselves a high standard, 
and have done various acts in conformity with it ; 
there, too, we see that their contemporaries, who often 
persecuted them and cast out their names as evil, yet 
confessed that their aim was the right aim ; there we 
find proofs that they were not creating a rule for 
themselves, but following one which would have been 
good for all men. Where is the great alteration ? Are 
not all things much as they were from the beginning ? In 
some respects, is not there a change for the worse ? Does 
not Christendom confess, by the pains which it has taken 
that its sons should study the lore of the old Pagan 
world, that something is to be gained from that which is 
not to be found among its own treasures ? Have not 
some crimes against which the old world protested 
been canonized by what has been called the faith of the 
new ? Have not some of its virtues been disparaged, 
even trampled under foot, by the professors of the same 
faith ? 



350 VIEWS OF CHRISTIANITY CHANGED. 

But there is another cause for the new strength which 
these reflections have gained in our time. If we thought, 
as many divines in the last century did, that the ap- 
pearance of an illustrious Teacher, a great Messiah, in 
the world, who promulgated a sublime code of morals, 
and did certain extraordinary acts to illustrate its truth, 
is all that was signified by the establishment of the 
Christian Church, and by the continued existence of it, 
we might not be under any great obligation to explain 
why that Teacher had not been much more heeded than 
those who preceded Him, why the announcement of 
His code has not ensured obedience to it, why His mira- 
cles may be acknowledged as singular occurrences for the 
time which witnessed them, and yet may have left no dis- 
tinct practical impression upon human life. But we have 
abandoned — I think, have been compelled to abandon — 
this apparently secure function. The hearts of suffering 
men have demanded from the book which we told them 
contained the charter of their inheritance — have found 
in it — information which these statements did not con- 
vey. They have asked whether God had merely laid 
down rules for them, without giving them any power to 
follow the rules; whether He had bidden them love 
Him and their neighbours, without taking account of 
the tremendous inclination they had to care only for 
themselves, or supplying them with any means to over- 
come it. They have craved for some influence over 
themselves, a quickening, transforming influence. And 



THE CONFESSION OF A SPIEIT. 351 

they have tliouglit that the Bible very distinctly met 
these necessities of theirs. In the New Testament espe- 
cially, they have discovered continual reference to a 
Spirit who should work in men to do those acts which 
they were least able of themselves to do, who should 
help their infirmities, who should teach what they 
wanted, and how to ask for it; who should knit to- 
gether those whom place, time, jealousies had divided. 
They have perceived that the promise of this Spirit is 
put forth as the most obvious and characteristic promise 
of the Christian dispensation. The very name of Christ, 
they have learnt, indicates that He was Himself endowed 
or anointed with a Spirit ; the preaching of His fore- 
runner and all His own preaching, declared that He had 
received it Himself, that He might bestow it upon His 
disciples then and in ages to come. Churchmen have 
discovered that the language of our formularies, as well 
as of the Scriptures, is in accordance with these con- 
victions. We have learned to speak habitually of a dis- 
pensation of the Spirit ; we have said that our Lord's 
coming in the flesh would have effected very little, that 
His moral teaching would have been necessarily inope- 
rative, if He had not carried out His own assurance, 
and sent His Spirit to enlighten and renew hearts which 
would have been otherwise dark and lifeless. 

But if we adopt this language, we ought to under- 
stand that we give every one a right to ask us some 
very searching questions. They will take this form : — 



352 CONSEQUENT DEMANDS ON US. 

' A Divine Spirit,' you tell us, ' has been given to men, 
given for the ver y purpose of moulding their life into con- 
formity with the law which has been proclaimed to them. 
Surely then, you are bound to show some evidence of that 
conformity. It cannot suffice merely to complain of men's 
disobedience or incredulity. Do you mean there has not 
been a power which could overcome these ? It cannot 
avail to talk of a world, or flesh, or Devil. Do you 
mean that these are stronger than God ?' 

There are several ways of evading this difficulty, of 
which Christian teachers and students have not failed to 
avail themselves. ' We can point you,' they have said, 
' to fruits of faith and love, which can only have been 
produced by a divine influence ; we can show you that 
those who have done the best deeds and cherished the 
best thoughts have traced them to this influence. More 
than this we are not bound to do. Nay, we are bound 
to draw a broad line between these and the multitude 
who do not confess any spiritual influence, who are not 
the subjects of any.' 

To a reader of the New Testament this statement 
must be most unsatisfactory. The Apostles speak of 
the holy men of old as moved by the Holy Ghost ; no 
one who reads the words of those men can doubt that 
they referred every true thing in themselves to a divine 
source. Yet the Apostles teach us, and they teach us, 
that they were looking forward to a blessing which had 
not been given them, and which later ages should inherit. 



THE BIBLE. 353 

This expectation, as I showed in my last Essay, pointed 
not merely to the manifestation of a great king, but also 
to the manifestation of Him from whom their thoughts 
and impulses had proceeded. 

The Christian kingdom cannot he described as a dis- 
pensation of the Spirit if these anticipations were not 
fulfilled. The Apostles must have deceived their hearers 
if the condition of those who lived after Christ was 
glorified, was not better in this respect than that of those 
who waited for His coming. The story of the descent of 
the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and of the signs which 
accompanied it, and of the preaching which followed it, 
must be thrown aside altogether if no great blessing was 
then vouchsafed to mankind, — if a few here and there 
may vindicate and appropriate to themselves a treasure 
which the true men who understood its nature best were 
impatient to acknowledge as universal. 

Some of those who could not acquiesce in so limited a 
view of the language of the Gospels and the Acts of the 
Apostles as this, have suggested that since the Holy 
Scriptures are the work of the Divine Spirit, the com- 
plete Bible may perhaps be that common possession 
which distinguishes the new world from the old. To 
possess a divine history which was growing for cen- 
turies, in its order and fulness, so that all the steps of 
it may be traced, and the issue to which it was leading 
distinctly apprehended, is no doubt an incalculable 
advantage. But, if what I said in the last Essay is 

A A 



354 LAPSES OF THE SPIRIT. 

true, we lose altogether the sense and symmetry of 
this history unless we look upon the revelation of the 
Divine Spirit to men as that which explains the past to 
us and hinds it to the future. Nay, according to its own 
showing, we have not the capacity of judging of its par- 
ticular passages, and of their relation to each other, unless 
we partake of the Spirit by which its writers were guided. 
So that to put the book as the substitute for the gift of 
which it testifies, or as including it, is as flagrant a con- 
tradiction as we can possibly fall into. 

A popular ecclesiastical historian of the last century, 
quite alive to this inconsistency, and, at the same time, 
aware of the ferocious divisions and horrible atrocities 
which he should have to record, has resorted to the 
hypothesis that there have been certain ' lapses ' of the 
Spirit in different periods, like in their principle, though 
not in their outward tokens, to that of which Whitsun- 
tide reminds us. Such lapses he thought would account 
for the revival of moral light and life after long ages of 
superstition and degeneracy; for such events as the 
Eeformation in the sixteenth century, and others nearer 
to his own day, to which he attached a similar, and almost 
equal, significance. I shall not now inquire whether his 
theory will account for these facts, or, if it does, whether 
there are not others equally demanding interpretation, 
for which it does not account. I would only remark that 
the phrase, occasional ' lapses ' of the Spirit, cannot be 
an exact counterpart of that which our Lord uses when 



THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN. 355 

He speaks of a Spirit wlio shall abide with His Church 
for ever, and that what we have to consider is whether 
such a description corresponds with the experience of 
Christendom, or contradicts it. 

Finally, in our own day. a number of persons fancy 
they have discovered a sufficient equivalent for the doc- 
trine of Scripture respecting a divine Spirit imparted 
to man, in the belief that man himself has a spiritual 
nature, — that all his powers, energies, affections show 
him to be more than a creature of flesh and blood. The 
doctrine of the Creed, they say, is only an old theo- 
cratic mode of enunciating a truth which belongs to 
the consciousness of all men, and of which some races 
have had a much keener intuition than the Jews. As 
I have already maintained that the Gospels and Epistles 
assert not merely that man has a spiritual nature, but 
that he is a spiritual being — as I have spoken of our 
Lord's ascension according to the ordinary view of it, 
as being the practical vindication of our spiritual posi- 
tion and spiritual capacities, I certainly cannot refuse 
to connect the doctrine of the coming of a divine Com- 
forter with that human principle. St. John connects 
them ; for he says, ' The Spirit was not yet given, 
because that Jesus was not yet glorified.' But both he 
and St. Paul take the greatest possible pains to dis- 
tinguish them. A mighty gift, according to the one, 
was bestowed upon a creature as soon as that creature 
was capable of receiving it. The Spirit, according to 



356 MONTANUS. 

the other, witnesseth with our spirit that we are the 
sons of God. 

It would have been obviously unfitting that I should 
reckon amongst these methods of explaining the words 
of our Lord and His Apostles that to which a Phrygian 
heretic of the second century resorted, when he affirmed 
that the Comforter whom our Lord promised was a 
bodily teacher, who was to fill up the gaps in His 
doctrine. But since that proposition, even accompanied 
with the assertion that Montanus himself was the fulfiller 
of the promise, had plausibility enough to secure the 
support of so able a man as Tertullian, and since it 
has reappeared in various shapes ever since, and was 
never more likely to appear than now, I think it is 
worth while to consider why it has seemed to those 
who entertained it, to answer more exactly to our 
Lord's language than any mere notion of an invisible 
influence. 

Such an influence is continually spoken of in Scrip- 
ture. The symbols of ' rain ' and ' dew ' serve beautifully 
to describe its silent, penetrating, live-giving, orderly 
nature. But what is there in such symbols which cor- 
responds to these words ? — 

' And when He is come, He will reprove the world of 
sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, 
because they believe not on me ; of righteousness, be- 
cause I go to my Father, and ye see me no more ; of 
judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged.' 



CAUSE OF HIS HERESY. 357 

All here is personal in the strictest sense. I will send 
Him, He shall come, He shall reprove. Is a Teacher, a 
Helper, a Sustainer, like moisture or vapour ? I appre- 
hend then, that if a man has been much vexed, as 
Tertullian with his fierce African nature was, by Gnos- 
tical Teachers, who have no associations with Spirit, 
except these — who do habitually confound it with vapour, 
and do not even attach to vapour that sense of power 
which the sight of a locomotive engine suggests to us — 
he is very likely to adopt a coarse material counterpart 
of reality, and as the punishment of his intemperate 
folly, to become the victim of some feeble impostor. 
A great lesson lies, I think, in that painful experience. 
If Christ has shown that the body which He took did 
not constitute His personality, but that, because He was 
a Person, because He was the Son of God, He could 
raise, redeem, and glorify His body ; if He has shown 
a man not to be a person because he has a body, but 
that he only claims and realizes his personality then 
when he maintains his relation to God, and holds his 
body as a subject ; if the Evil Spirit is not less personal 
because he comes to us and came to Christ in no bodily 
shape ; if we can only worship the living and true God 
as a Person and a Father; — then I believe we shall 
accept the words which I have quoted in the most literal 
sense when we take them in their most spiritual sense. 
There is indeed a deep question growing out of this con- 
cerning the relation of the Person of the Comforter to 



358 THE SENSE OF SIN. 

the Son, who says He will send Him, — to the Father, 
from whom He is said to proceed. That question I 
reserve for a future Essay. In this I propose only to 
inquire whether, if we acknowledge this Spirit as a 
Person, and if we accept our Lord's account of His work, 
we shall not have a solution of the difficulty with which 
I started — the only interpretation of the dark as well as 
of the bright passages in the History of Christendom. 

1. I suppose no one doubts that the feelings about 
Sin in the modern world have been very different 
from any which can be traced in the old. I have 
little need to make out a proof of this fact, because it 
will be rather eagerly accepted as a concession by those 
who hold that Christianity has operated injuriously on 
the welfare of mankind. They will say, ■ It is cer- 
tainly true that there has been a terror in the minds of 
men respecting a number of practices and habits which 
seemed very innocent to Pagans, comparatively inno- 
cent even to Jews. There has been a fear of touching, 
tasting, handling, which belonged in an immeasurably 
less degree to Greeks and Romans. A dark shadow 
has been cast over the face of nature, and over social 
life.' I shall not now inquire to what extent these 
charges are true, because I have considered the subject 
in my second Essay ; and I have had occasion in every 
succeeding one to make use of the conclusions at which 
I arrived in the course of it. I spoke of an evil which 
lies beneath the transgression for which laws affix 



CONSEQUENCES OF IT. 359 

punishment, beneath the habits and temperament to 
which the mere ethical philosopher confines himself. 
This evil lies close to myself; I become conscious of 
it when I think of myself; I cannot refer it to the 
operation of outward circumstances ; I am rather obliged 
to confess it as the cause of anything wrong which 
affects me in them. I said that undoubtedly this sense 
of personal evil had set men upon devising a multitude 
of schemes for avoiding its present anguish, for escaping 
from the terrors of which it seemed pregnant in the 
future, for conciliating the Power whom it might have 
offended. If then it is true that this sense of personal 
evil did not exist to at all the same extent before the 
coming of Christ as it has existed since ; that though 
we may trace clear anticipations of it in some of the 
great thinkers of the old world, as well as in the popular 
belief, yet that for the most part both are occupied 
with the less radical and inward forms of evil, — it is 
quite to be expected that the superstitions of the latter 
time should have had oftentimes a worse character 
than those of the former, that the wickedness should 
be of a more inward and conscious kind, that the 
man should be in more direct open war with him- 
self, with his fellows, and with his Creator. All this 
sounds very shocking, and very confirmatory of that 
which the objector urges. And yet I maintained that 
it is good for a man thus to know what is going on 
within him ; thus to see himself stript bare of appear- 



360 THE SENSE OF DELIVERANCE. 

ances and plausibilities ; thus to be prevented from 
transferring to accidents, which he cannot remedy, what 
may be cured, when he sees it and confesses it as his 
own. And I urged that all the mischief of those con- 
trivances which the man himself has imagined, or his 
priest suggested, for the sake of soothing his pain, lies 
in this, that they throw him back into a region of phan- 
toms and shadows, out of which this dreadful experience 
is intended to lead him, that they hinder him from 
seeking the moral clearness and freedom which are 
awaiting him if he will receive them. 

For there is another set of facts, as we have seen, in 
the history of Christendom to which, also, there is only 
a most imperfect parallel in the ancient world. We 
find men emerging out of darkness into a marvellous 
light, coming to understand what that strife in them- 
selves meant, and how and why they had fallen into it, 
coming to see that their true state is that of union with 
One higher than themselves, their King and their Deli- 
verer, in whom they were created, apart from whom they 
cannot subsist, in trusting whom they lose that feverish 
self-consciousness which has been their death, and ac- 
quire a pure, and true, and common life. 

Now, what is it that one wants to make these two 
sets of facts, which comprise so much of what is most 
dismal and most blessed in the individual, and in the 
social, experience of eighteen centuries, intelligible to 
us? Is it not the belief that some Person has been 



THE AUTHOR OF BOTH FEELINGS. 361 

leading men, in spite of all struggles and reluctance 
on their parts, in spite of all efforts to escape from 
the reality of things, in spite of all the soothing or 
irritating prescriptions of earthly doctors, to a know- 
ledge of what they are according to that separate, un- 
natural, immoral condition which they have imagined 
for themselves, and of what they are according to the 
true and blessed order which God has established for 
them ? And is not this precisely what is expressed in 
the words, ' The Comforter shall reprove ' or ' convict 
the world of sin, because they believe not on me? ' 

Nothing in those words determines how this or that 
man shall receive the influence which is exerted upon 
him. The ' world'' is said to be the subject of the con- 
viction ; the whole of Society will be acted upon by the 
divine Spirit. And yet it is not to the outside world 
that He will speak. A conviction of Sin must be 
addressed to the conscience, the inner man, the person 
from whom thoughts, words and acts flow. There will, 
it is said, be this silent mysterious operation. It will 
produce results. These results may be merely fear, 
cowardice, horror of God, contrivances to escape from 
Him. They may be trust in Him as a Friend and Deli- 
verer — a renunciation of all self-seeking experiments — 
rest in the Son of Man. They may be any condition of 
feeling between these two extremes. On this subject we 
have no information ; we require none. We want to 
know who is speaking to us; what He is saying, to what 



362 STANDARD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

issue He would lead us — what there is in us which may 
yield to Him or resist Him. On these points we have all 
the light we require ; all that can help us to obedience 
and peace. If we wish to limit the movements of that 
Spirit which bloweth where it listeth, that we may 
prove ourselves to be within the circle of His influence, 
we offer a sad evidence that we are resisting Him. 

2. If the conscience of sin is characteristic of the new 
world as distinguished from the old, I do not think any 
one can doubt that there has been also a higher standard 
of Righteousness than any which can be traced in 
the best men and best nations that classical history 
introduces to us. I make this remark with a full 
recollection of the apparent objections to it which I 
noticed before, and with the greatest desire to admit 
their reasonableness. I acknowledge that the elevation 
of the Christian standard has been a plea for treating 
the love of city and country which the Greek and 
Eoman heroes exhibited as mundane and heathenish. 
I acknowledge that this feeling has prevailed among 
Protestants as well as Romanists, and that whenever and 
wherever it has prevailed, there has been the best excuse 
for exclaiming against the popular religious doctrines and 
doctors as immoral and anti-social, for declaring that the 
patriotism which they despised was better and truer 
than any thing which they put in its place. I admit, 
as I did in my Essay on Regeneration, that spiritual 
or ecclesiastical maxims of life have proved, not only 



PEETEESIONS OF IT. 363 

hostile to civil life, but to domestic ; to those relations 
upon which God, in the Jewish dispensation, put such 
high honour, which He takes as the very instruments of 
revealing himself, which St. Paul connects with the life 
and substance of the Church. And this being the case, 
it has followed, of course, that the ideal Righteousness 
has sunk into a meaner and more degrading form 
of Self-righteousness than any which can be found 
beyond the circle of Christendom. Nay, it would seem 
as if the self-righteous practices which have tormented 
the world elsewhere have their centre and explanation 
in Christian Society. 

Above all, the fearful contradictions which have 
gathered about the idea of Sacrifice, and have made the 
giving up of Self the plea for the most intense calcu- 
lating Selfishness, have received their fullest illustration 
from the acts and conceptions of Christian men. Among 
them, too, the horrible notion of making the safety of 
the soul a motive for violations of Truth, nay of making 
Truth merely a means to safety, has led to such intri- 
cacies of deception and of cruelty, as it would be hard 
to find examples of in the countries where it has never 
been proclaimed that the Lord God is a God of Truth 
and without iniquity, one who hateth robbery for burnt- 
offering. 

I do not want to conceal one of these terrible obser- 
vations ; we have need to meditate them more and more 
deeply. I only want you to dwell as earnestly, on 



364 

another class of observations, which appear utterly op- 
posed to them, and yet which cannot be separated from 
them. That wicked contempt for national and domestic 
life to which I alluded, is connected with such an idea 
of a universal fellowship, of a union with men as men, 
of duties owing to all men everywhere — with such evi- 
dences that this idea is not a barren one, not a mere 
maxim or theory, but a mighty operative principle — as 
you can scarcely perceive the faintest foreshadowing of 
among the greatest citizens of the old republics. That 
grovelling notion of men practising acts of devotion 
that they may avert some penalty or buy some prize, 
has been associated with such a resolute casting away of 
life, reputation, hope, everything, when other men were 
to be blessed, and the love of God to them was to 
be declared — with such an overpowering belief in a 
charity that is mightier than Sin, Death, the Devil, 
which can penetrate the being of man, and utterly de- 
stroy the selfishness there — as you can only hear the 
feeblest prophecy of in the highest raptures of ancient 
poets and philosophers ; and yet the realization of it 
has been among peasants and feeble women. That 
blasphemous notion of lying for God, which has defiled 
the morality of Romanists and Protestants, has been 
accompanied in the minds of both, with a persuasion 
that Truth is higher than Heaven and deeper than Hell, 
that God Himself is the Truth ; that everything is to be 
parted with for the sake of that. I do not say that the 



THE CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 365 

best men in the old world had not a conviction that 
this must be so, or that we do not owe them gratitude 
unspeakable, for having testified that man's business in 
life is to seek for that which is, to believe .that he may 
find it, and to strip himself of all phantoms and shadows 
which interfere with the apprehension of it. God be 
thanked for having raised up such witnesses to Himself. 
What I say is, that the witness has been found to be 
real and substantial, by tens of thousands who knew 
nothing of dialectics, whose only training was that of 
poverty, sickness, the prison, the rack. These were their 
schoolmasters ; by these they were lifted up to feel that 
there was a perfect Righteousness, a universal self- 
sacrificing Love, an eternal Truth, of which they were 
inheritors. 

And here is the solution of the mystery. ' When He 
cometh He shall convict the world of Righteousness, 
because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more.' 
There had been a standard of eternal righteousness, love, 
self-sacrifice, exhibited in the world, exhibited by a man 
carrying mortal flesh, dying a death which we die. And 
that man had gone out of sight, had seemed to leave no 
traces of Himself on earth. But a voice was ever whisper- 
ing at men's hearts, ' He is ascended on high to His 
Father and your Father. That Eighteousness which 
was seen here, is now yours ; it is for one and all of 
you. You are participators in that sacrifice which He 
has offered for all, and which He is presenting as your 



366 WHENEVER IT MUST HAVE COME. 

Intercessor to His Father. You may know that Truth, 
and that Truth may make you free, of which He came 
into the world, and died, and has ascended, to testify.' 

How otherwise we could bring these different warr- 
ing experiences into harmony, I cannot conceive. The 
wisdom of Church teachers will not explain them ; they 
have been often the great agents in corruption, and when 
they have been otherwise the secret must be accounted 
for. The innate nobleness of man will not explain them, 
for we have to interpret proofs of his debasement. His 
innate evil will not explain them, for we have to inter- 
pret high thoughts and glorious deeds. If we believed 
that there had been a Spirit of Truth, not acting upon 
the surface of men's minds, but carrying on a controversy 
with them in their inmost being — encountering all 
the rebellions of the cowardly, reluctant Will, all its 
desires to become a mere Self-will — bringing out its 
darkness, as light always must, into fuller and stronger 
relief, making the devilish apparent because it was con- 
fronted with the divine ; if we could believe that this was 
a Comforter, a divine Person, stronger than His enemies, 
able to strengthen man to all fixed resolutions and noble 
purposes — to bring the objects which he perceives dimly 
and at a distance, within the sphere of his vision ; able 
to inspire longings and hopes when the spirit of man is 
most bent and cowed ; able to point him upwards to a 
Father in Heaven when he is most ready to call himself 
merely a son of earth ; able at the same time to make him 



SENSE OF JUDGMENT. 367 

understand his work on earth, and to endow him with 
powers for performing it ; able to support him in suffer- 
ing, to give him glimpses of the substantial glory into 
which Christ has entered through suffering ; able to make 
him perceive that everything which is merely his own is 
perishable — that what is most divine is common to him 
with his fellows ; — then I think we need not choose 
the bright spots of modern history and conceal its 
horrors; the more courageously we face the one, the 
more hope will come to us from the contemplation of 
the other. 

3. For assuredly there has been, and is, a conviction 
working in the minds of men, the most various and unlike 
each other, that this kind of conflict is not to go on for 
ever. There is a sense of Judgment, of some great 
decision, which is to settle for ever which of these is 
the stronger, the Evil or the Good, with which the 
Evil has been so intricately combined. This thought 
of Judgment has been itself as perplexed as either 
of the others. Men have fancied they were to prepare 
for judgment by eschewing their common duties — by de- 
voting themselves to the work of saving their own souls. 
They have fancied that if, by any means, they could 
escape from judgment, it would be an unspeakable bless- 
ing. They have fancied that Christ came, not as He 
said, to save the world, but to save them, that they might 
not be judged like their fellows. The strangest results, 
doctrinal and practical, have followed from these habits 



368 HOW CHARACTERISTIC OF CHRISTENDOM. 

of mind, and from the encouragement which Christian 
teachers have given to them ; some of them I pointed 
out in my twelfth Essay. But in the midst of these we 
perceive a deep and settled desire for judgment, a long- 
ing that there should not "be a perpetual confusion of 
Sin and Righteousness, of Truth and Falsehood — a cer- 
tainty that if Christ is King, there cannot be. While 
there has been, and is, such a dread of judgment as 
there never was in the old world, there has been, 
and is, such a passionate craving for judgment as the 
heroes of it may have now and then felt in hopeful 
moments when the contradictions of the world became 
very oppressive ; but such as certainly never became 
a part of their abiding convictions. For it is evident 
that the feelings respecting judgment must correspond 
to those respecting sin and righteousness. If our 
thoughts of these are superficial, our thoughts of that 
will be; if we connect them with the very substance 
of our being, the judgment will bear reference to that. 
The awfulness of the thoughts of Judgment which we 
in Christendom have entertained has been the inevitable 
consequence of Sin coming out in such close tremendous 
connexion with our own selves, of the Righteousness 
which opposes it being brought so close to us. The hope- 
fulness of our thoughts respecting judgment has arisen 
in like manner from the sense of a mighty struggle in the 
inmost region of our thoughts and consciences between 
the powers of good and evil, from the certainty that the 



THE PEINCE OF THE WORLD JUDGED. 369 

good is mightier even there, and that God, being abso- 
lutely righteous, is on the side of the good against the 
evil. But what external doctrine about the righteous- 
ness of G-od could have kept this faith alive in any 
single heart, far more in the heart of Christendom, for 
eighteen centuries ? What confidence that Christ had 
come and preached of good being mightier than ill, 
nay. had shown it in His own person to be mightier, 
could have kept it alive ; or how could that confidence 
have been itself preserved? " When He cometh He 
shall convince the world of judgment, because the Prince 
of this world is judged." Yes! He has been saying to 
every generation, He is saying very emphatically to 
ours, — ' It is not uncertain what the issue of the battle 
between right and wrong, truth and lies, will be. It 
is known ; you may know it. The evil power seems to 
have a mighty ascendency. If you look at the out- 
side of history, if you merely dwell upon statistics, 
you will come to the conclusion that the good is very 
weak indeed. But examine the inner life of the world, 
search into the principles and causes of its peace and 
order, of its misery and confusion — above all, look into 
the principles and causes of the right and truth you 
have sought and done, of the wrong and falsehood to 
which you have yielded, and you will find in the one 
the pledges of endurance and eternity, in the other of 
swift and sudden destruction. It is true for you; it is 
true for mankind ; Christ has proved it ; and though 

B B 



370 INFLUENCES MUST BE REFERRED TO A PERSON. 

heaven and earth pass away, His words, His acts, His 
triumphs do not pass away. He will bring forth right- 
eousness to judgment. 7 

To speak of this conviction merely as some gracious 
influence which steals into certain gentle, prepared, be- 
lieving hearts, is altogether to misinterpret its nature, 
and to make such influences unintelligible to the persons 
who receive them. They are worth nothing to any one 
who calls them his own. They soon become occasions 
of pride and self-glorification, or else of despondency, 
because the feelings which were so serene and pleasant 
yesterday are turbulent and gloomy to-day ; unless they 
are traced to One whose presence does not depend upon 
any of our changeable moods. No doubt it is a paradox 
that we have the Comforter, and ask for the Comforter ; 
that we pray for Him, and could not pray without Him. 
No doubt it is a paradox that He is with those who feel 
His presence least ; that when we seem for a moment to 
feel He is ours, He is gone. These are paradoxes ; for 
everything which has relation to our internal being, 
puts on a strange shape when it takes the form of 
a proposition. Every man finds this out for himself, 
when he begins to think and feel. The difficulty is not 
increased by referring our thoughts and feelings to One 
who overlooks them, and knows them, and sympathises 
with them. It is saved from being intolerable. If we 
were forced to think that all which Scripture tells us of 
One who grieves with us, and for us, and whom we may 



THE COMFOKTER IN THE BOOK. 371 

grieve, is mere fiction, the burden of existence would 
have nothing to lighten it. Few as there may be who 
attach a distinct meaning to those words, all would 
feel an infinite loss if they were taken away. For they 
belong to all, and we cheat ourselves of the blessing 
they might afford us, and the light they throw upon 
God's ways, by denying them to any. 

Again, it cannot be that this Teacher is merely speak- 
ing to us out of the Bible. To have Him speaking there 
in broad common words ; to have Him setting before us 
thoughts that were thought, and feelings that were felt, 
ages ago, and which we may, nevertheless, assert as our 
own ; to have Him there, unfolding the steps of a long 
world-drama r which has reached a divine catastrophe, 
and yet which is moving on to another catastrophe, we 
being persons in it now, and being able to understand 
the passing scenes of it by those which we read, and to 
be sure that the same Divine Person who appeared at the 
opening of it, has been present throughout, and will 
gather all together round Himself, at the end; this is 
very wonderful : this is a sign to us that we are not to 
control the Spirit by our selfishness, or make Him the 
mere minister of our experiences. But the Comforter is 
not in the book if He is not convincing the world. 

And therefore it cannot be that He descends now and 
then, at distant intervals, in uncertain lapses, like the 
Angel into the pool of Bethesda. There may be great 
crises in the education of the world, times when it starts 
up after years or centuries of paralysis, into a more 



372 EFFECT OF GLORIFYING: FACULTIES. 

vigorous and healthy life ; when buried truths come forth 
out of their caves, and cast away their grave-clothes ; 
when there seems to be a new heaven and a new earth, 
because the clouds which hid the face of one, and hin- 
dered the quickening processes of the other, have passed 
away. But such moments, however surprising they may 
seem to us, obey some fixed law, and are connected by 
close however invisible links, and denote the action and 
inspiration of One who is dwelling in the midst of us. 

But oh, how melancholy if we must resolve this Spirit 
merely into the spiritual movements, affections, powers 
of the creatures whom He came to guide and animate ! 
Thanks be to God for the witness which is borne in our 
day for the spirituality, not of a few men, but of man as 
man. It is His teaching, His way of declaring His 
Son to us, the battle of His Spirit with our pettishness 
and vanity. But if we substitute the lesson for the 
Teacher, if man falls down and worships his own faculties 
of worship, if he determines to be a God because he has 
the capacity of knowing God, what a tyranny of par- 
ticular spiritual men is he preparing for himself, what a 
slavery to mere gifts, what a rivalry of impostors, each 
pretending to be the spiritual and divine man who can 
guide the rest ; ultimately what an abyss of materialism ! 
We shall not have one Mont anus claiming to be the 
Comforter, but each little neighbourhood and sect will 
have its own Montanus, its petty prophet, to take the 
place of the Spirit who guideth into all truth. 

' After all, how easy it has been for the Unitarian 



DENIAL OF THE COMFOETEE. 373 

to deny the Personality of the Holy Spirit, and even to 
find Scriptural excuses for his denial !' It is most easy 
for him, and for all of us. I could find a thousand ex- 
cuses if I wanted them ; I should not despair of bringing 
any texts by skilful processes to vote on my side ; after 
a time I might convince myself that that was their most 
natural meaning. But I cannot find that it is an object 
for which I ought to spend this labour. I cannot find 
that I should be much the gainer if I persuaded myself 
that I had not this Friend, and Teacher, and Comforter 
with me. I do not mean in ease, or satisfaction, or peace 
of mind. These, one is never to keep at the expense of 
truth. In fact, I have never discovered how one can 
keep them, if one prefers them to truth. But it seems 
to me that I shall not love the truth better, if I feel I 
have not a Spirit of Truth guiding me towards it. I 
think I should give up the pursuit altogether, I should 
take up with any appearances or falsehoods that looked 
plausible. 

" It is not, however," some Unitarian will say, " an 
argument that one has a gift, because one has a need of 
it. Locke's argument against the Papists has always 
passed muster with us. l You say there is an infallible 
authority, because we should be the better for having 
one ; how much better we should be off if we were all 
infallible, and yet we are not.'" I am bold enough to 
differ both with Locke and the Papists. I do not think 
we should be better for having an infallible mortal 



374 REASONS FOR TRUSTING HIM. 

guide, or for being infallible ourselves. If either state 
were good for us, I believe it would have been so ordered. 
I think we have an infallible, immortal Guide, and that 
this is immeasurably better for us. But do not accept 
the evidence of your wishes or necessities, if you think 
that unsatisfactory. Try whether you can solve the 
problems of the world without the belief in this personal 
Teacher. Or if you do not care for the problems of the 
world, try whether you can solve the problems of your 
own heart. I speak boldly to you on this point, for I 
am satisfied that you have this Comforter with you as I 
have; that He is convincing you of sin, of righteousness, 
and of judgment, as well as me. I am sure there is a 
Spirit of lies who is always striving to lead me into all 
falsehood, and to separate me from you and all men. I 
believe we shall understand one another when we know 
that his adversary is with us, to make us true and make 
us one. The unity of the Spirit, however, and what is 
involved in it, I reserve for my next subject. 



ESSAY XV. 

ON THE UNITY OF THE CHUECH. 

- Supposing those facts which you dwelt upon in 
your last Essay do imply the presence of Him whom our 
Lord calls the Comforter, the great difficulty for those 
who compare the promises of the New Testament with 
the History of Christendom still remains. The Apostles 
speak, or have always been supposed to speak, of a 
Church, a one Catholic Church, as established, or about 
to be established, on this earth. They connect that 
Church with the gift of a Spirit, who is called the Holy 
Spirit, who, it was said, should dwell in the Church as 
He did not in the world, — who was to purify the hearts 
of its members. Where is this Church ? What does 
History say of it ? What do our eyes tell us about it ? 
Answer these questions, or the deepest anxieties of our 
age are still unsatisfied.' 

I feel the truth of these remarks. The subject which 
I discussed in the last Essay approaches so closely to 
this, that I could not always avoid allusion to it. But I 
passed it by as much as I could ; the words of our Lord 
on which I commented enabled me to do so. They 



376 THE BIBLE, SOCIAL. 

speak of a World, not of a Church. They speak of the 
Comforter as convicting the world of Sin, of Bighteous- 
ness, of Judgment — not of Him as a Sanctifier, or Becon- 
ciler. I desired to follow His guidance : but I did not 
wish to shrink from the other examination, however 
appalling it may seem. I allow that there is a very 
distinct obligation laid upon us all to explain what 
we understand "by the language of Scripture respecting 
the gift of the Spirit and the foundation of the 
Church, and how we suppose the records of the world, 
and the world which we see, can be explained in 
accordance with it. 

I cannot make this task easier to myself by main- 
taining that the New Testament promises certain 
spiritual blessings to individuals, but that it does not 
connect the gift of the Spirit with a Society. Every 
passage in the Bible — the context and construction 
of the Bible— refutes that supposition. The earlier 
records speak of a nation called out by God to be the 
witness of His presence and government ; the later 
records have no connexion with these — have no distinct 
meaning of their own — if they do not describe the expan- 
sion of a national Society into a human and ' universal 
Society. The expectations of the Apostles, awakened 
and sustained by their Lord's teachings, pointed to this 
issue : — they were to be the ministers of a kingdom ; 
they were to preach of a kingdom to Israelites; 
finally, they were to baptize all nations. They were 



377 

told they had not yet power to fulfil that work. They 
knew that they had not. They had a mysterious 
assurance that they were united still to the Lord who 
had Ibeen with them on earth : they felt they might call 
upon His Father as their Father. But they could not 
realize their relation to that invisible world into which 
their Master had entered — entered, He said, for them. 
He had chosen them as a body to work under Him. He 
had told them that they were to work together after He 
had gone away. He had said that all men would know 
they were His disciples by the love they had to each 
other. But they were conscious of jealousies and rival- 
ries ; they felt as if each might soon again be trying to 
live and act for himself. Unless their Lord could bind 
them together by that power which bound Him to them, 
fellowship among such naturally unsociable elements was 
impossible. And surely such a power was needed if they 
were ever to break through the fetters of their Jewish 
exclusiveness ; to feel themselves one with men of 
all kindreds and tongues. The events said to have 
occurred on the day of Pentecost, exactly corresponded 
to these anticipations. A power is said to have taken 
possession of them — a power which governed their 
thought and speech. But it was the power of a Spirit 
who made them feel they were one, and proclaim their 
oneness with the crowd which was assembled at that 
f^ast, because He who established it, and whose mighty 
works were commemorated in it, was declaring them 



378 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 

to be one with Him. The story follows of the bap- 
tism of the three thousand, who were to receive the 
same gift as the Apostles had received, and of the new 
Society at Jerusalem — which is not noted for the exercise 
of the gift of tongues, but for the continuance of its mem- 
bers in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, for the joy 
and singleness of heart with which they ate their bread, 
for their not counting the things they had as their own, 
for the distribution which they made to those who had 
need, for their courage before the Sanhedrim, for the 
confidence with which they prayed that they might speak 
with all boldness of the King against whom Jews and 
Gentiles had gathered together. 

The Apostles do indeed exercise powers of healing, 
and they are especially careful to assert that no cure was 
wrought in their own name, but in the name of the ascended 
Son of God. But what the historian chiefly dwells on, is 
on the order of the Society which was established in that 
name, on its unity and holiness while it confessed the 
Spirit to be with it — on the punishment of those (for 
there were such in that infant community) who lied 
against the Holy Ghost, — on the new organization which 
was suggested by the quarrels (for there were those in that 
infant community) between Hebrews and Hellenists. 

When St. Paul goes with his Gospel into the cities of 
Asia Minor, of Macedonia, of Greece Proper, it is still 
to form Societies. Each of these is named an Ecclesif; 
the members of it are said to be called or chosen, or to 



THE PHENOMENA OF THE WOELD. 379 

"be in God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. They 
are said to be baptized by one Spirit into one body. 
These distinct bodies are portions of a universal body. 

Everything, then, in the Old and New Testament, 
speaks of fellowship and organization. And to suppose 
that the latestbirth in the universe so solemnly announced, 
so long waited for, was an abortion, or that the child was 
not to come to the use of its limbs and vital energies 
for centuries, is to suppose the Apostles at once deceived 
and deceivers. They told their disciples, as their Lord 
had told them, that a crisis to be witnessed by some of 
them, would show that a kingdom had come forth, 
which, however apparently insignificant, was instinct 
with a Spirit that would enable it to rule the nations. 

Admitting this, how can I dare to face the problems 
which the world, as we see it, presents to us ? Must I 
not save the credit of Inspiration by resorting to fictions 
which have not done men much good hitherto, and 
which will certainly not save them now ? By assuming, 
for instance, that forms and professions constitute a 
Church — that external badges mean the same thing as 
an indwelling Spirit ? I hope I shall be preserved from 
any such wicked trifling ; if I fall into it, the falsehood 
will soon make itself evident. 

First then ; we find a body which affirms itself to be 
the one Holy Catholic Church of the world. Its members 
form the bulk of the population of Western Europe : its 
claims to be what it represents itself to be, are publicly 



380 CLAIMS OF THE LATIN CHURCH. 

recognised by many of the most conspicuous and civilized 
states. This Ibody boasts that it is the heir of that 
which was established in Jerusalem on the day of Pente- 
cost : whatever rights and power resided in that Church, 
it says, have descended upon it. If that Church was 
able to do wonderful works in virtue of a power dwelling 
in it, this Church declares that it can do the same ; the 
gift, it says, has never been withdrawn, has been ex- 
ercised at intervals in all generations, makes itself 
manifest now. This sign of continuance and identity 
it is inclined to dwell upon most; still others are not 
wanting. There has been no break, it declares, in the 
line of Church ministers, from the time of the Apostles 
downwards. The character of the organization is the 
same. The Apostles were regarded as the fathers of 
a family ; the idea of paternity has been strictly pre- 
served ; it has even unfolded itself; it is more completely 
realized now than it was at first. The capital of the 
Church, it is admitted, has been changed ; but that 
change came to pass, first, by a divine ordinance expressly 
depriving Jerusalem of its honour; secondly, by a series of 
events, equally attesting the divine purpose, which have 
deposed the old Csesars from their seat, and have esta- 
blished the successors of St. Peter upon it. And this cir- 
cumstance has, it is said, produced an unity which would 
otherwise have been wanting to Christendom. The wild 
Gothic tribes, full of their separate strifes, impatient of 
fellowship, have been brought to confess a general spiritual 



ITS POWERS AND DIFFUSION. 381 

head, and to acknowledge a community of faith higher 
than any differences or any national disagreements. In 
defiance of the tendencies of each nation to find a sepa- 
rate language for itself, a common language has estab- 
lished itself as an organ of devotion. In defiance, again, 
of the tendency of each nation to set up for itself a sepa- 
rate worship — a tendency equally evident in the Old 
world and the New — a common creed and a common 
worship have succeeded in keeping their ground for many 
centuries — the head of the Society being always able 
to interpret what has been misunderstood, to put down 
the inventors of new opinions, to provide for fresh emer- 
gencies. For, there being such a person, whose authority 
all the different members of this Society acknowledge as 
infallible and past appeal, the Church, it is said, can 
combine the greatest fixedness with the greatest elas- 
ticity. It has maintained the faith once delivered to the 
saints without wavering ; it has ever been giving birth 
to new opinions or practices, where they were needful to 
develope and complete the old — to new orders of men 
when it was requisite to encounter diseases or necessities 
in the body politic, that had previously not existed or 
not been observed. 

This Church, it is further declared, is not only spread 
over the whole surface of modern European society ; 
not only are its priests to be seen at the corners of 
every street ; not only are they performing services 
continually in every Church, which establish a com- 
munion between angels and men — the world of the 



382 ITS HOLINESS. 

living and the departed — not only is the Sacrifice 
continually offered up which reconciles the offending 
creatures to their Creator, and brings down blessings on 
the earth — not only is that Sacrifice lifted before the 
eyes of men, that they may believe and adore, — but the 
influence of the Church affects the politics of all king- 
doms, penetrates into the recesses of all families. Every 
individual is within the reach of its guidance and bless- 
ing. Every burdened conscience knows where it may 
go that it may make its burden known, — who can set it 
free. Nothing in the arrangements of this Society, it is 
said, is merely distant and abstract ; it meets each peculiar 
case, provides a remedy for every ailment, a satisfaction 
for every craving. And it proves — so its champions 
triumphantly continue — its title to be the one Catholic 
Church, since all who rebel against it or separate from 
it necessarily become divided, since no body besides 
it can put forth the least pretension to universality. 
And it proves itself to be holy, because no other 
can show such an array of devoted, self-sacrificing 
saints. 

I suspect that it is at this point that the ordinary 
observer, the simple layman, the European traveller — 
for it is to such a man, and not to some adverse divine, 
that these statements are likely to be made — will step in 
with an objection. " All your arguments," he will 
answer, ' may be true enough ; at all events, I cannot 
refute them. You may have the miraculous powers 
you speak of, the uninterrupted descent, the infallible 



OBJECTIONS. 383 

authority, the fixed dogmas, the adaptation to circum- 
stances, the band of saints. But when you talk of a 
holy society, do tell me what your words mean, for 
they utterly bewilder me. Do you call this society, in 
which I am dwelling, a holy society ? Do you call this 
country, for instance, which is nearest the centre of 
holiness, a holy country? I will not press you too 
much. I will suppose that though you have miraculous 
powers, the power does not always exert itself in this 
way. That it can make statues wink more easily than it 
can make human beings abandon their habits of revenge 
or lying, — I can understand. But when the power is 
exerted, when you are doing a work for men, I want 
to know whether that is for good or for ill ? I cannot 
make up my mind that it is for good. I cannot 
help perceiving, not that you do not reclaim men 
from being false, but that you continually make them 
false ; not that you sometimes fail in preventing moral 
corruption, but that you are doing very much, by some 
of your most potent and most vaunted agencies, to pro- 
mote it ; not that evil and debasing habits have defied all 
the energies of preachers, confessors, and absolvers ; but 
that preachers, confessors, and absolvers, are very often 
helping more to strengthen these habits, and make 
them invincible, than all other men together." 

This kind of conviction — Bomanists should understand 
it, and we for our humiliation should understand it too — 
is doing immeasurably more to make their arguments 



384 IS THE UNITY EEAL? 

fall lifeless upon practical men, whose minds are not 
blinded to the distinction of right and wrong, than all 
our elaborate reasonings. And when a man has gone 
so far in his examination of the phrase, l one holy 
Catholic Church,' his observation, without any help 
from divinity, or much from ecclesiastical history, may 
carry him a little further. He may demur to a unity 
which is compatible with the infinite contrarieties, not 
diversities, of belief, which he will himself have met 
with in Roman Catholic countries ; with the wild im- 
moral heathenish superstitions, which an intelligent 
priest will at once disclaim, yet which exist in the very 
classes that most acknowledge the influence of priests ; 
with the contemptuous infidelity which they themselves 
impute to the classes that are out of their reach ; with 
the discontent that is muttered by better men. All 
this, — with the modifications of faith which exist in the 
sacerdotal order itself, touching all points from the 
most unquestioning orthodoxy to absolute atheism, — 
may co-exist, no doubt, with something that is called 
unity ; nay, these differences may be alleged as proofs 
how vigorous the system must be which can enforce 
a uniformity in spite of them. But they may some- 
what puzzle a person who is inquiring whether this is 
that Church which began when a Spirit of unity took 
possession of a body of men, allowing them to retain 
their external differences, because they had that within 
which made them one. And a similar difficulty will 



PEOTESTANT NATIONS. 385 

beset him when he considers that the symbol of the 
descent of that Spirit was, that men could hear, in their 
different tongues, the wonderful works of God, and when 
he observes that the one tongue which is the symbol 
of modem Catholicism is a sentence of exclusion to the 
whole body of Greeks, seeing that they boast of a 
somewhat older and more sacred dialect. And gene- 
rally it will strike him, I fancy, that the boasts of 
Bomanists themselves establish the inference which he 
would have deduced from his own experience, that 
the preservation of a vast machinery, of a surface uni- 
formity, of an artificial holiness, is what they under- 
stand by the preservation of a Church in which the 
Holy Spirit of Unity has made His habitation. 

II. An impartial observer who has arrived at this 
mournful conclusion may turn, with some pleasure, to 
another class of facts which the modern European 
world offers to him. He may hear with satisfaction 
that several nations have raised their protest against 
the attempt to crush all distinct thoughts and lan- 
guage under one general name. He will rejoice to 
find that they have declared that their own rulers are 
responsible to God, and to no earthly superior, whatever 
claims of infallibility or divinity he may allege — for their 
conduct to their subjects and to other lands. He may 
find that in such countries there is a recognition of the 
dignity of civil life, of the duty of nations to maintain 
their independence, of the inviolability of the domestic 

c c 



386 COMPLAINTS OF THEM. 

hearth, of the worth which belongs to the ordinary 
virtues of plain dealing and truth-speaking, which he 
has sought for in vain among those who only breathe a 
sacerdotal atmosphere. He may be pleased to observe 
that nevertheless in these countries there is an ac- 
knowledgment of the importance and necessity of a 
spiritual influence ; that the priest, though he cannot 
claim to be a king, has his own recognised and lawful 
position. 

At first such discoveries may be very cheering ; pos- 
sibly they will not cease to be so. But he will soon 
hear, not only from Eomanists, not only from those who 
suppose that the Komanist is somewhere near the truth 
in his conception of the Church, but also from those 
who regard him as hopelessly and fatally astray, that 
these protesting nations are altogether unspiritual and 
secular. These hard names will not be bestowed with- 
out some startling evidence to show that they are de- 
served. ' Look,' he will be told, ' at the lower classes 
in these nations. They may be less flagrantly super- 
stitious than those in Romish countries. Are they less 
debased, less animal, less ignorant? What spiritual 
influence has been exerted over them ?' — ' Look,' it will 
be said again, ' at the upper classes. The priests are 
less obnoxious to them than the Eomish priests are to 
those among whom they dwell. Is not this because it 
is more clearly understood that they shall be left to 
themselves, that their vices and their wrong doings to 



THE COMPLAINTS REASONABLE. 387 

those who are under their influence shall not be noticed ; 
that the priest shall abdicate his functions as a spiritual 
reprover, and shall be content to be reckoned a safety- 
valve of the social machine, or as some insignificant 
accessory to it, which no one will disturb until it begins 
to move? Certain doctrines he is to believe, certain 
w T ords he is to repeat, certain acts he is to go through ; 
what have those doctrines, words, acts, to do with men 
not of his profession — often, what have they to do with 
him ? They are charms to keep the different classes of 
a country in those positions to each other, which the 
laws or conventions of the land have assigned them. 
And whither,' it is asked, ' are these nations tending? 
Are not material gratifications becoming more and more 
the one prize which they are setting before themselves ? 
Is not the pursuit of wealth the one great means of 
winning that prize ? Are not art, science, religion, valued 
just so far as they contribute to make the possession of 
money more agreeable, or the search for it more secure? 
Is it here that we are to look for a Holy Catholic 
Church, — here that we can find tokens that a Spirit of 
Holiness and Love is dwelling among men ? ' 

What use can there be in shutting one's ears to such 
words as these ? Is it not better to take in the full force 
of them, and to meditate on them silently ? For so we 
may in due time discover, not the secret of acquiescing 
in the evils which press upon us, but the secret of deliver- 
ance from them. Those who are flying to Kome expect 



388 SPIRITUAL SECTS. 

that a miraculous illumination will some day enable 
them to see the anomalies which now shock them in its 
system quite differently. It is probable that a blindness 
(which may be also miraculous) will by degrees save them 
from the unhappiness of seeing these anomalies at all. 
We should wish and pray, in proportion as we love our 
country, that we may not shrink from contemplating one 
of its sins which are our own, but that God's light may 
show them to us just as they are. 

III. Perhaps the student may find some relief in turn- 
ing from both these spectacles to a number of particular 
societies, which declare that the so-called Catholic body, 
and the bodies which pretend to be National Churches, 
have equally mistaken the foundation on which a Church 
ought to rest. He must needs be attracted by their 
statements, not only because they point out evils which 
he has himself noticed in their opponents, but because 
they affirm that the true spiritual principle is with them. 
The Church, they say, cannot be a mere world. It must 
be a body of men chosen out of the world. It cannot be 
a body merely held together by certain external profes- 
sions. It must consist of those who are drawn by a Divine 
Spirit to confess a Divine Lord. What data can sound 
more hopeful than these ? How likely it seems that here 
at last the feet of weary pilgrims will find some resting- 
place ; that here we have arrived at the secret which has 
escaped anxious and earnest men for so many genera- 
tions ! There is much in the early history of all sects 



THEIR GOOD AND EVIL. 389 

to favour the opinion. Who can deny the fervent zeal 
against injustice and evil which possessed the leaders — 
the hearty affection, genial sympathy, passionate self- 
devotion of the followers ? Who can say that they were 
only denouncing other men, and not uttering the deepest 
conviction of their own hearts ? If they were often unjust 
and violent, their fierce language was often the indica- 
tion of a loving rather than of a hating spirit ; a wise 
man who was the object of it would have liked it much 
better than the smooth and civil speeches of less cordial 
foes. A Spirit — yes, the Spirit of Truth — there must 
have been among these men ; their sect would not have 
survived them for a century, or even a year, if it had 
been merely gathered for a purpose of spite or faction. 

A person who has arrived at this conviction will not 
be driven from it by any criticisms or denunciations of 
those who oppose these sects. But what if he should 
hear deep groans arising from the midst of them, from 
the very persons who have been educated in them, from 
those who have learnt to despise, and have continued to 
despise, the bodies from which they have been separated '? 
What if the complaints of them should be of this kind, — 
that they are not spiritual bodies at all, but formal 
and worldly ; not assertors of moral freedom, but great 
restrainers of it ; that they are bitter against each other, 
seldom at peace within ; that the best praise which can be 
bestowed upon the best man in any one of these bodies 
— the praise which his admirers always dwell upon — 



390 DESPONDENCY. 

is that lie lias emancipated himself from the ordinary 
habits and temper of it? Such is the testimony, not 
of hard judges, but of sufferers. And if so, can we find 
among these sects the resemblance of that Church of 
which St. Paul spake as being one Body, into which all 
had been baptized by one Spirit ? 

But if no one of these separate inquiries has led to any 
satisfactory result, how much more unsatisfactory would 
the comparison of them seem to be ! What an impres- 
sion that must leave upon every mind of conflict, strife, 
contradiction in those who bear the name of the one 
Lord ! What utter despair it must awaken in him that 
there ever can be Unity, unless, indeed, men can agree 
that they are not spiritual beings ; that they are not con- 
nected with an invisible world at all ; that they are not 
children of a Father in Heaven ; that they have no ties 
to each other except such as are produced by outward 
animal necessities, which one man cannot satisfy without 
the assistance of his neighbour. Were it possible to arrive 
at that state of feeling, some difficulties might no doubt 
be removed. But does experience show that it is pos- 
sible ? Would perfect unity or unbroken discord — a war 
of elements, without the hope or chance of peace — be the 
consequence, if it were ? 

To one revolving that frightful possibility, and asking 
whether there must not be some way out of this labyrinth, 
the thought, I am sure, will at last present itself, that those 
facts which he has been pondering offer the most decisive 



HOPE. 391 

witness for, not against, the law which was proclaimed on 
the day of Pentecost ; for, not against, the assertion that 
it is the law of human society — the one "by which society 
is governed — however much men may be denying it or 
rebelling against it. Look once again at that Church 
which boasts to be One, Holy, Catholic. Is her boast too 
grand a one ? Has she believed too firmly that a Church 
has been established of which all her sons have a right 
to call themselves members — that a Spirit has been given 
of which they all have a right to be partakers ? Would 
to Grod she did hold that belief ! What a different pic- 
ture her history would present if she had held it stead- 
fastly ! If she had been convinced that Heaven and 
Earth were brought into one — that a real fellowship 
exists, and has been manifested, between them — what 
a mass of contrivances to produce that fellowship, to fill 
up the chasm between the visible and the invisible world, 
would be swept away ! What portentous superstitions, 
what dark idolatries, would vanish if once that faith — 
not the faith of her, enemies, but her own — was really 
accepted, honestly carried out ! 

I pressed this point in my Essay on Regeneration ; 
but I could not then speak of the faith which the 
Romish Church professes to have in an in-dwelling 
Spirit, a Spirit of truth, and love, and power, which is 
to bind all together in one and enable her to rule the 
nations. I could not then point out what the contradic- 
tion was between this profession and her adoption of 



392 THE AGENT AND THE KING. 

those practices of the conjuror, which the miracles of 
the Gospel were intended to explode ; of the practices 
of the diplomatist, from which she ought to have 
delivered the nations, instead of setting the vilest ex- 
ample of them; of the practices of the hard-hearted 
worldly oppressor, crushing the spirit under the flesh, 
the conscience under casuistry, the reason under decrees, 
when she was sent to teach men of a Father who had 
claimed them as His sons, of a Son who was at His 
right hand for them, of a Spirit who was within them 
to make them inheritors of His glory. I could not 
then show how great the sin was which she had com- 
mitted in assuming that St. Peter, or any successor of 
his, could be the father of the Church, how necessarily 
such a fiction divides earth from heaven, and makes the 
Church into a world. 

Like the Angelo of our great dramatist, the deputy of 
a true ruler has played his tyrannical and hypocritical 
tricks, punishing others for the crimes which he commits 
himself, often betraying the innocence which he is com- 
missioned to protect. But, as that same story teaches 
us, the Duke is not really absent from his government, 
but is watching, counteracting, bringing to an altogether 
different issue, the plots of his agent. See how the 
Papal history in its most palmy moment bears witness 
of that fact. The policy of Innocent III. was so mys- 
terious and so perfect, that a modern German historian, 
through admiration of it, is said to have abandoned 



INNOCENT III. 393 

the faith, of his childhood. ' What but a divine power,' 
he and others have argued, ' could have enabled a man 
to rule the world as Innocent did; to guide at the 
same moment the Latin kingdom in Greece, which he 
did not assist in establishing, but which he knew so 
well how to use when it was established ; to nurse a young 
monarch for Germany, who might hereafter make the 
Empire the tool of the Papacy ; to set his foot on the 
prostrate monarch of England ? ' A wonderful spectacle 
assuredly; but there is another as well worthy of 
our study. Is it not as clear an evidence of a divine 
government in the world, that all these exquisite plots 
came to nothing ; that the reviving energies of Greece 
so soon shattered the Latin kingdom in pieces ; that 
Frederic II. became, not the instrument of Popes, but 
their most hated enemy and scourge ; that Stephen Lang- 
ton, forced into his see by interdicts and excommunica- 
tions, became the assertor of English independence, the 
punisher of the monarch who betrayed his trust, the 
author of the Charter ? Is it not as great a proof of a 
spiritual power in the world, that the feeble Francis of 
Assisi, by the one thought that Christ is the friend of 
the poor, accomplished a thousand times more to preserve 
and extend the Church, than the hundred-handed Pope, 
with all his resources of outward strength and unrivalled 
craft? Is it nothing that Louis IX., because he was 
a faithful national sovereign who loved justice, was felt 
to be such a saint as no Pope had ever been ? 



394 THE SIN OF NATIONAL CHUECHES 

Thus, then, every oppression and crime that has been 
rightly imputed to Rome, has arisen from her not con- 
fessing in deed, as she has confessed in words, that 
a Spirit has appeared to "build up a one Holy Catholic 
Church. Every healthful influence she has ever exercised 
has proceeded from that belief. 

And may not all the sins, which, with no less truth, 
have been imputed to Protestant National Churches, 
be traced to the same unbelief; all that has been good 
to the same faith ? Have they erred from their too great 
patriotism, their too zealous determination not to give it 
up for emperor or pope, for man or devil ; from their fixed 
purpose that no religion whatever should rob them of 
their common morality, or persuade them to do evil for 
the sake of pleasing God ? No ; but they have erred in 
not thinking that the Spirit of God was with them, to 
enable them to maintain their national steadfastness, to 
fulfil their common duties, to support their love of truth 
against the temptations which are continually over- 
powering it ; to purify their patriotism of exclusiveness, 
their zeal for the plain and the practical, of sordidness ; 
to enable them to feel that they are members of one 
body with those whom the ranks and orders of civil 
society divide from them ; to give them the freedom, the 
manliness, the sympathy with those of other races, 
which selfishness is taking from them. 

And why have those sects I spoke of become so par- 
tial, so hard, so cruel? Is it because their forefathers 



AND OF SECTS. 395 

were wrong in telling them that the Spirit was seeking 
to Ibind them in one, and that no mere external bond 
could bind them ? Surely not ; this lesson truly taken 
home to the heart, makes men true, first, Catholic in due 
time, leading them to cling mightily to the special con- 
viction God has wrought in them, afterwards enabling 
them to feel the necessity of other convictions to sustain 
that. It is the loss of this faith, it is the substitution of 
some petty external badge and symbol of theirs, for the 
belief and confession of a Divine Spirit, which is making 
them impatient of dogmas, yet fiercely dogmatic ; eager 
to rob other men of their treasures, feeble in their hold 
upon their own. It is this which tempts their sons to 
ask whether the earth has no other foundations than 
those which the sect has laid, often to arrive at the 
miserable conclusion that its foundations are built on 
rottenness. 

But it is not so! however much excuse they may 
have for suspecting it. There has no promise of 
Scripture been proved nugatory ; there is none which 
has not been fulfilled more than men dreamed of, 
which will not be fulfilled to the very letter. I have 
said there were liars and murmurers in the Church at 
Jerusalem. The promise was not, that there should not 
be these in the time to come. Every form of cor- 
ruption and heresy was discovered by St. Paul in the 
Churches to which he wrote. There was no pledge 
given, that these should not appear in the later time. 



396 THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 

St. Jolm said there were many Antichrists in his day. 
It is no stumbling-block to our faith, then, if there are 
many in ours. But it would be the utter uprooting of 
our faith if we found that there was no such body as 
the Apostles told us there should be, with which all 
lying and contention should be at war ; if there was 
no Spirit dwelling in that body against which these 
heresies and corruptions and Antichrists are fighting, 
and which will at last prevail against them. Eomanists, 
Protestant nations, all sects, declare that there is such 
a body, and that there is such a Spirit. Their words 
bear witness of it, their crimes, which outrage those 
words, bear witness of it still more. 

And thus we are enabled to understand better than 
by all artificial definitions, how a Church differs from a 
world. ' The Comforter,' our Lord says, ' shall convince 
the world.' When He speaks to the disciples, He says, 
He shall come and dwell in you. The world contains 
the elements of which the Church is composed. In the 
Church, these elements are penetrated by a uniting, 
reconciling power. The Church is, therefore, human 
society in its normal state ; the world, that same society 
irregular and abnormal. The world is the Church with- 
out God ; the Church is the world restored to its relation 
with God, taken back by Him into the state for which 
He created it. Deprive the Church of its centre, and 
you make it into a world. If you give it a false centre, 
as the Komanists have done, still preserving the sacra- 



NULLA SALUS EXTRA ECCLESIAM. 397 

ments, forms, creeds, which speak of the true centre, 
there necessarily comes out that grotesque hybrid which 
we witness, a world assuming all the dignity and 
authority of a Church — a Church practising all the 
worst fictions of a world; the world assuming to be 
heavenly — a Church confessing itself to be of the earth, 
earthy. 

From this contradiction a number of others proceed : 
I will take one which will serve as the specimen of a 
whole class. The doctrine, Nulla salus extra, Ecclesiam, 
sounds the cruellest of all doctrines ; it has become so 
in fact. But consider the origin of it. A man possessed 
with the conviction that human beings are not meant 
to live in a world where every one is divided from his 
neighbour — in which there is no uniting, fusing prin- 
ciple, in which each lives to himself, and for himself — 
bids them fly from that chaos. For he cries, ' There is 
a universe for you ! Nay, more, there is a Father's house 
open to you. God is not the frowning, distant tyrant the 
world takes Him to be; not split up into a multitude of 
broken forms and images ; not one to whom we are to 
offer a cold civil lip service, by way of conciliating Him 
or doing Him honour. He is the Head of a family ; 
His Son has proved you to be members of it ; His Spirit 
is given you that you may know Him as He is, not as 
your hard material hearts represent Him to you. Come 
into this Ark ! Take up your place in this Family ! 
Here is deliverance and health ! Nulla salus extra 



398 THE OLD AND NEW MEANING OF IT. 

Ecclesiam. No comfort, no health, no peace, while you 
count yourselves exiles from God, strangers to your 
"brethren.' 

Is this a hard saying ? Is it not full of gentleness, 
benignity, love? But the Church becomes a world- 
Church ; a Church that speaks of a Father in Heaven, 
and sets up a Father on earth ; that introduces earthly 
mediators because the Mediator has gone away, and it is 
needful to make Him propitious ; that boasts itself to 
be endued with a Spirit of truth, and can only exhibit 
the powers of the Spirit in doing untrue acts : then 
the phrase necessarily assumes, not a different mean- 
ing from this, but one that is directly opposite to 
it. ' Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam! God is ready to 
destroy you. We can save you from Him. Think 
what a risk you are incurring. You may be wrong! 
Then perdition is certain.' Oh, doctrine of devils, if 
such is to be found in earth or in hell ! Surely, Salva- 
tion and Damnation become identical, if the soul is 
saved by the loss of its trust in God, by conceiving Him 
to be like those demons from whom the Apostles said 
that Christ came to deliver mankind, as unlike as pos- 
sible to the perfect image which was shown forth in 
Him! 

We cannot, however, cast stones at the Eomanists, 
for adopting this notion of safety. We have fallen 
into it almost as much as they have. It belongs espe- 
cially to our money-getting habits. If some wander 



DUTY OF OUR CHURCH. 399 

from our Church to Rome, because they believe that, on 
the whole, they have a better chance of escaping de- 
struction there, we have ourselves to blame ; we have 
sown the wind of selfishness, and we must reap the 
whirlwind of desertion. But it would be a great mis- 
take and injustice, to suppose that the selfish motive is 
the exclusive one, even in the worst cases, or the pre- 
dominant one in any better men. Love and Selfishness 
are strangely, inextricably blended. The true idea of 
Safety is mixed with its accursed counterfeit. They long 
for a larger fellowship, a Father's house, a Spirit who 
can make them brothers with all men, Greeks, Romanists, 
Protestants. The wish may be shrivelled and contracted 
by a thousand causes ; but it is there ; and if we cannot 
gratify it, — if we cannot tell them that they are inheritors 
of Christ's kingdom, in earth and heaven, and that the 
Spirit of the Father and Son is with them — in order that 
the inheritance may not be a nominal, but a real one, — 
we shall not keep them, we ought not to keep them. 
They will try whether that blessing which our creeds and 
prayers assure them is theirs, can be obtained elsewhere ; 
and if they meet with bitter disappointment, or take up 
with a wretched substitute for the infinite good whicli 
God has taught them to feel necessary, is not our unbe- 
lief the cause ? And is not the only way of preserving 
our National Church, to declare solemnly, habitually, 
perseveringly, that it does bear this witness not for itself 
alone, but on behalf of the Romanist and the Protestant 



400 THE REVIVING CHURCH. 

Sectarian ? Yes ! that it is ready to make any sacri- 
fices if it can but bear that witness effectually ? 

I do not indeed say that this witness must come from 
us alone, perhaps not from us chiefly. Let it come from 
where it will, God must be the author of it. He may 
see fit to make this truth powerfully evident to some 
Italian monk, who has been seeking in vain to make 
himself holy, and discovers that holiness must come 
from a Spirit of Holiness, who is also a Spirit of 
Unity. It may come to some Romish Bishop as he 
listens to the Vent Creator Spiritus, and believes that 
the sevenfold gifts are intended for him. It may come 
to some earnest member of a Protestant sect, feeling that 
the Spirit of Truth cannot be the Spirit of narrowness. 
It may come to some man lying outside of all churches 
and sects, and asking whether he can be intended to be 
only a part of an unsympathising, forlorn world. To 
whichever it comes first, the faith will pass rapidly, as 
by an electrical chain, from one to another. It will 
break through all barriers of opinion and circumstance. 
None will know how he has received it, because all will 
have received it from that Spirit who bloweth where He 
listeth, and of whom you cannot say whence He cometh 
or whither He goeth. 

But seeing that what appear to us the most irregular 
currents obey a fixed and eternal law, we may be sure 
that that Spirit will work as He has always worked; 
that He will change nothing and yet will make all 



THE TRINITY. 401 

things new. That mighty wonder which we behold 
every year when the self-same roots and stems, which 
were the symbols of all that is hard, and dry, and sepa- 
rate, become clothed with verdure, full of life, and joy, 
and music, will be exhibited in the moral world. No 
form will be cast away, no ordinance will be treated as 
worthless, nothing which has expressed the thought or 
belief of any man, will be found unmeaning, because 
the Spirit of the living God will call forth every sleeping 
and latent power into activity, everything that has been 
dead into life, all that has been divided into harmony. 
Only the miserable counterfeits will pass away. What- 
ever has been true, if it has been ever so weak and 
broken, will find its place in that creation which God 
has declared to be very good. 

But have I not spoken again and again in this Essay 
of a Father, a Son, and a Spirit? Has not all my 
comfort in the past, my hope for the future, been con- 
nected with the revelation of that Name, with the full 
acknowledgment of it ? Even so, my Unitarian bro- 
ther. And all the longings you have for fellowship, 
and freedom, and unity, for the breaking down of bar- 
riers, for a universal comprehension, point the same 
way. I have not deceived you by pretending to agree 
with you where I cannot. I am more entirely at issue 
with you in your denials than those who denounce 
you most. I have come now to the root of all your 

D D 



402 CONCLUSION. 

denials, to that Name which i" believe to be the ground 
of human life, and of human society. If you have 
borne with me so far, — finding many of my words, no 
doubt, strange, probably foolish, enthusiastical, anti- 
quated, yet still I hope now and then discovering a 
sense in them which answers to a sense in you, — will 
you listen while I tell you why I could not find a 
Trinity in Unity to be a foundation for myself to rest 
upon, if I did not also regard it as a foundation for you 
and for all men ? 



ESSAY XVI. 

ON THE TRINITY IN UNITY. 

My first Essay was on Charity ; the last will also be on 
Charity. I could not find that a charity which believed 
all things, hoped all things, endured all things, had its 
root on this earth, or in the heart of any man who dwells 
on this earth. Yet it seerned to me that such a Charity 
was needed to make this earth what it ought to be, and 
that human hearts have a profound sense of its necessity 
for them, an infinite craving to possess it, and be filled 
with it. Something stood in the way of the good which 
the earth sighs for, and which man sighs for. A vision 
of Sin rose up before us confronting the vision of Charity. 
It was portentous, for it seemed part of the very creature 
who had the dream of a perfect good. But he disclaimed 
it, he tried to account for it by some accidents of his 
position, or by some essential error in his constitution ; 
at last he said, I have yielded to an oppressor, an Evil 
Spirit has withdrawn me from my true Lord. Then 
arose the question, Who is this true Lord ? where is He 



404 KECAPITULATION. 

to be found? Righteousness was felt to Toe even more 
closely intertwined with the being of the man than 
Evil; for awhile he was disposed to claim it as his 
own ; suffering, and the sense of an infinite contradic- 
tion, did not deliver him from that belief. But some 
one there was who led him to cry for a Redeemer, to be 
sure that He lived, to be sure that Righteousness was 
in Him, and therefore was Man's. 

Was this Redeemer, so near to man, so inseparable 
from man, of earthly race ? The vision of a Son of God 
rose upon us; a thousand different traditions pointed to 
it; it took the most various forms; but the heart of man 
said, • There must be One in whom all these meet ; there 
must be One who did not rise from manhood into Godhead, 
but who can exhibit the perfection of manhood, because 
He has the perfection of Godhead.' Is the perfection 
of manhood then compatible with the infirmities and 
corruptions of which men have become heirs? The 
mythologies of the world said, c It must be so, we need 
Incarnations ; our deliverers must share our flesh, our 
sorrows ; ' yes ! they could not stop there — ' our sins.' 
The philosophers said, ' It cannot be so ; the Divine 
Nature must be free from the contact of that which 
debases us, that from which we ourselves need eman- 
cipation.' 

They could show how men, forming the Gods after 
their own images, had glorified and deified what was 
most immoral and base. The Scripture spoke to us of 



RECAPITULATION, 405 

the Son of God taking the flesh of man, entering into 
all the infirmities, bearing the sins of man, that He 
might show forth the purity, compassion, love, of His 
Father. But the sense in men of a separation from the 
God to whom they were meant to be united, had, we found, 
produced innumerable schemes for bringing about a re- 
conciliation. The Scriptures told us of an Atonement, 
originating with God ; made with men in His Son ; who 
had entirely trusted and entirely obeyed His Father ; 
who had willingly entered into the death of man ; whose 
death was the satisfaction of the Divine Love, the satis- 
faction of man's yearnings for reconciliation with it. Yet 
Death, the Grave, the Abyss beyond, are the dark contra- 
dictions for human beings ; He could not be a perfect 
deliverer who had entered into them, and remained 
under their power. The idea of a bodily Resurrection, 
we found, had been accepted by men, not as a fact to be 
attested by a great amount of evidence, but as the 
inevitable issue of the previous revelation. If there is 
a Son of God, a Lord of man, He must rise. What did 
such a Resurrection imply? The Scripture speaks of 
it as implying a Justification of Gentile as well as of 
Jew ; that is to say, of mankind. We saw how Chris- 
tians had evaded this declaration, and the evidence of it 
which their baptism offered, limiting the blessing by 
certain rules and measures of theirs, even using the 
witness of it as an excuse for doubt, and for new efforts 
of their own to make themselves righteous ; then, at last, 



406 RECAPITULATION. 

discovering that faith in God's Justification is the only 
condition of being righteous. But this faith of each 
individual man, that God had justified him by the 
Resurrection of Christ, and was inviting him to habitual 
trust, implied something more. We discovered in the 
belief of Christians the acknowledgment of a Regenera- 
tion, effected not for individual men merely, but for 
human society. 

This belief, however feebly and imperfectly held by the 
Church, had nevertheless vindicated itself by the experi- 
ence of history, and enabled us to reconcile the doctrines 
of eminent moralists respecting the constitution of man, 
with the fullest admission of actual departures from it. 
For, if the Resurrection of Christ declared that men, in 
spite of all that seemed to put them at a distance from 
God, were recognised by Him as His children on earth, 
the Ascension of Christ in their nature proclaimed that 
they did not belong to earth ; that they were spiritual 
beings, capable of holding converse with Him who is a 
Spirit ; enabled to do so, because that Son who had taken 
their flesh, and had glorified it, had said that it should be 
their food and nourishment. This belief of the Ascension 
as the great triumph for man, was greatly shaken by a 
prevalent notion that Christ being absent now, and not 
exercising the functions of royalty or judgment, will 
assume them at some distant day ; and be clothed again 
with earthly limitations. It was therefore needful to 
show, that the Judgment spoken of in the Bible and the 



KECAPITULATION, 407 

Creed, implied the continual presence of Christ, the daily 
exposure of men and nations to His cognisance and 
censure, the assurance that He will be manifested, not 
in some humbler condition, but as He is, to the con- 
sciences and eyes of men ; for the putting down of all evil, 
and the establishment of righteousness. But though 
the minds of men had always felt that they must look 
upwards to some Ruler above them, they had equally 
confessed the presence of an Inspirer within them. The 
Christian revelation, we find, corresponded as much to 
these anticipations, as to any which we had considered 
before. It explained to us whence all Inspirations had 
proceeded, who was the Author of them, how they are 
to be received, how they may be abused. But the 
Scripture spoke of this Inspirer, or Comforter, as coming 
to the ages following Christ's Ascension, in a way 
He had not come to those which preceded it. Have 
events justified this assurance ? I endeavoured to show 
that there had been such a sense of sin, of righteousness, 
and of judgment in the later periods of the world's 
history, as cannot be found in the earlier, and as could 
only have proceeded from the teaching of a Person, such 
as our Lord describes to us. But finally, we were told 
this Person would not only convince a world, but be 
the establisher of a One Holy Catholic Church. The 
difficulty of accepting this statement was very great. A 
certain body had claimed to be the one Catholic Church, 
a number of bodies had claimed to be Churches ; they 



408 THE TEINITY NOT A FEESH SUBJECT. 

had denounced each other ; there had been that in all 
which contradicted the idea the Scripture sets forth 
of holiness, unity, universality. But this contradiction 
showed that the Scripture had revealed the true law 
of human society; for that one body and these diffe- 
rent bodies had not become partial, tyrannical, godless 
by maintaining too strongly that Earth and Heaven had 
been reconciled, and that the Spirit had come down 
from the Father and the Son to establish that reconcili- 
ation ; but by acting as if Heaven and Earth were still 
separated, as if we had still to effect for ourselves that 
which the Scripture declares that God has effected, as 
if there were no Spirit to unite us with the Father and 
the Son, and with each other. To this cause — no other 
was adequate — we could trace the want of holiness, 
catholicity, unity, in the Church. This unbelief being 
removed, all that man has dreamed of, all that God has 
promised, must be accomplished. 

I have not, then, to enter upon a new subject in this 
Essay. I am not speaking for the first time, of the 
Trinity in Unity. I have been speaking of it through- 
out. Each consciousness that we have discovered in man, 
each fact of Revelation that has answered to it, has 
been a step in the discovery and demonstration of this 
truth. I should be abandoning the method to which I 
have endeavoured strictly to adhere, if I admitted that 
now, at last, I have come upon a mere dogma, which had 
no support but tradition, or inferences from texts of 



OBJECT OF THIS ESSAY. 409 

Scripture ; or, on the other hand, upon a great philoso- 
phical tenet which wise men may deduce from reason 
or find latent in nature, but with which the poor way- 
farer has nothing to do. We may owe much to tradition 
for giving expression to the faith in a Trinity ; texts of 
Scripture may confirm it ; the context of Scripture may 
bring it out in beautiful harmony with all the divine 
discoveries to man, Philosophy may have seen indica- 
tions of a Trinity in the forms and principles of the 
universe, in the constitution of man himself. But unless 
we are utterly inconsistent with all that has been said 
hitherto, these can be but indexes and guides to a Name 
which is implied in our thoughts, acts, words, in our 
fellowship with each other ; without which we cannot 
explain the utterances of the poorest peasant, or of the 
greatest sage ; which makes thoughts real, prayers pos- 
sible ; which brings distinctness out of vagueness, unity 
out of division ; which shows us how in fact, and not 
merely in imagination, the charity of God may find 
its reflex and expression in the charity of man, and 
the charity of man its substance as well as its fruition in 
the charity of God. "What I have to do in this Essay, 
then, is certainly not to bring forth arguments against 
those who impugn this doctrine, but only to show how 
each portion of that Name into which we are baptized, 
answers to some apprehension and anticipation of human 
beings ; how the setting up of one part of the Name 
against another has been the cause of strife, unrighteous- 



410 FATE AND JUPITEE. 

ness, superstition ; why, therefore, the acknowledgment 
of that Name in its fulness and Unity, is Eternal Life. 

I. It often seems to us a great contradiction in Greek 
Mythology, that the chief of the Gods should be repre- 
sented as himself subject to Fate. We do not enough 
consider what a real and deep comfort the Polytheist 
found in this thought. A ruler of the Elements might 
have in himself all the vicissitudes which Nature exhi- 
bits. If he were like a human sovereign, he might have 
all the caprices of a human sovereign. This faith in Ne- 
cessity told the Greek that the Universe was not, after 
all, dependent on those natural vicissitudes or human 
caprices, that a law fixed and unchangeable was beneath 
them all. At times, it seemed to him as if Jove, the 
king of earth, was chaining down all the aspirations 
of man, was fastening to a rock, and tormenting with a 
vulture, the champions who sought to do him good, 
to make him freer and wiser. What a relief to think 
that Destiny had determined the period of this captivity, 
and of the tyranny which had imposed it ! And yet 
there were times when the sense of a hard, dry iron 
rule — an irresistible necessity — became more intolerable 
than the government of the most uncertain king ; when 
the heart fled from that as a horrible oppression, to this 
as human and sympathetic. Especially these words, 
' Father of Gods and men,' touched chords which at once 
responded to them. There was the hint of something 
not only more friendly than Fate, but more mighty. 



LAW AND WILL. 411 

The will in man leaps up to acknowledge a Will that is 
akin to its own, and that may govern it. 

Through all the Jewish History, fixed law, grounded 
on the name of the I AM, had been coming forth in 
conjunction with a course of discipline which the God 
of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob was declared by pro- 
phets and holy men to be carrying on for the children 
of His Covenant. The Law asserted that which was 
right ; nothing could alter it ; to violate it was death. 
The Judge of the whole earth was doing right; His 
design was to make His people right. Christ on the 
Mountain announced the Will of which that law was 
the expression. He said it was the Will of a Father. 
Here is the root and substance of His revelation. He 
does not proclaim a Will which dispenses with law 
or changes it, but that absolutely righteous and true 
Will of which it affirms the existence, but which it 
cannot make effectual. And this Will is the Will of 
the Father. Beneath that name of the God of Abraham, 
this was concealed. The sound of it was from time to 
time caught, not only by holy men in their closets, but by 
the ordinary worshipper. The Greek heard the echo of 
it from his Thessalian hill. Christ uttered it. 

For those who receive His message the two concep- 
tions which were always fighting with each other, always 
trying to be one, are actually united. There is the 
perfect rest which comes from the thought that there 
can be no caprice in the order of the Universe — that 



412 HOW POLYTHEISM REVIVES. 

right can never become wrong, or wrong right ; there is 
the comfort that no hard fate controls caprice, that the 
Divine Will excludes it. The fixed and the absolute 
which man craves for as the support of his being, and 
of all creation, is there. It is bound inseparably with a 
name which speaks of Relation, which tells him what 
he was sure must be ; that his own Will has an author ; 
that he is not merely a creature of the highest God, but 
a child. 

All is peace if we accept this as a Revelation — as a 
Gospel from God. Reduce it again into the conceptions 
of your own mind — make your anticipations, not the test, 
that they must be, but the measure of the Revelation — 
and all becomes war again. An iron necessity for the 
nineteenth century after Christ, as much as for all before 
it, becomes that to which you refer the world's life and 
your own. It is your best comfort to do so. And yet it is 
such miserable comfort that you will be continually seek- 
ing a refuge from it. The vision of some present helper — 
some one to whom you can address cries and litanies- 
rises up whether your philosophy has taught you to 
banish it or not. To such a one you will give the name 
of Father, it will seem the most natural name ; you will 
feel that you must use it, or that your words die in the 
utterance. But that name will be associated, as it was 
among old Polytheists, with thoughts of the clouds and 
the changes of Nature ; if your heart insists upon more 
human associations, then with the turbulence and irregu- 



TEE FATHEE — NOT A NOTION. 413 

larity you find in yourself. Deal honestly with your 
own experiences — it is all I ask — and then say whether 
the old name, the given name, is not that which you 
need, and which you are trying to spell out. You are 
sure it is there : it must be very near to you. But 
speculation does not bring it nearer. The child must 
confess its Father, and confess itself to Him ; then it 
knows whose Will rules it, and with what Will it has 
been striving. 

All our past inquiries into the superstitions of the 
Christian world have brought us to the same cod elusion. 
From whatever quarter they have proceeded, their ten- 
dency has been the same. The notion of a sovereign 
Necessity has taken the place of a Will of absolute truth 
and goodness ; the notion of a capricious Power to be 
made placable by some agency of ours has superseded 
the belief in a Father, whose will Christ came on earth 
to manifest and to fulfil. Each opinion gives birth to 
the other as a deliverance from it ; one is supposed to 
be more philosophical, the other more practical, than our 
Baptismal Faith; that remains as a refuge for those who 
have found the first utterly offensive to their reason, the 
second subversive of their morality. The more simply 
it is proclaimed, the less pains we take to sustain it by 
our proofs — the more it will commend itself to the hearts 
that are needing it. If we substitute for a belief in a 
Father a belief in a notion of ours about a Father, we 
shall turn a confession which shall be the greatest witness 



414 MEDIATORS. 

that the Kingdom of Heaven has been opened to all, into 
a means of excluding our brethren as well as ourselves 
from it. 

II. There can be no Mediator between a man and a 
mere Fate or Necessity. A multitude of mediators will 
be conceived between a man and the capricious Power 
who seems to be dealing with him at his pleasure. 
These mediators will be all, more or less distinctly, felt 
to be the helpers of the creatures against their Creator ; 
they may be regarded as having some natural relation- 
ship to him, or as having by some merit obtained an 
influence or a right over him ; but they will be always 
the benignant patrons of those whom he is disposed, for 
some reason, to injure. When the word ' Father' has 
taken any strong hold of a man anywhere, when it 
has displaced the notion of a mere sovereign, there will 
be a counteraction to this feeling. Those who plead for 
man with Him, must be felt in some sense to express 
His mind; they will be acknowledged as His sons. 
But this counteraction, though great, will be inadequate 
till we have learnt the lesson of which I was speaking 
just now, — the lesson that the Will of this Father is as 
steadfast as any Fate can be ; that its steadfastness con- 
sists in its righteousness ; that there cannot be variable- 
ness in it, because it is good, and can only seek to do 
good. This Will demands that which the Necessity 
excludes. It must speak, it must utter itself. A Will 
cannot be without a Word. A Will that is, and lives, 



THE LIVING WORD; THE SON, 415 

must utter itself by a living Word. This is what 
St. John, in his divine theology, declares to us. But if 
he speaks in one sentence of a Word, he speaks in the 
next of a Son. The names are used interchangeably ; 
but we should, I believe, lose more than we know, if 
either had been used exclusively. Experience has shown 
that those who determinately prefer the first, soon fall 
into that notion of a mere emanation from some mys- 
terious abyss of Divinity, which haunted the oriental 
mystics and the early heretics, or else into the notion of 
a mere principle indwelling in man. The Word becomes 
impersonal : the Will becomes impersonal : very soon 
the man forgets that he is a person himself, and becomes 
a mere dreamer or speculator. The blessed name of 
Son, which connects itself with all human sympathies 
and relationships, is the deliverance from this phantom 
region. While we cleave to it, we can never forget 
that only a Person can express the Will of the Absolute 
Being; that only in a Person He can see His own 
image. But the Son of God will soon be merged for us 
in the Son of Man — we shall refer His relationship to 
ours, not ours to His — if we do not recur to that other 
name, if we do not, by meditating upon it, save our- 
selves from the unspeakable dangers into which those 
fall who think of the Son only as their Saviour, and not 
as manifesting the brightness of His Father's glory. 
Both these perils are besetting us now as much as they 
beset any former age, I think they are besetting us 



416 THE ABSTKACT AND POPULAR TENDENCIES. 

more ; often when we are not conscious of either as a 
theological tendency, it is affecting our moral and social 
feelings, and our ordinary acts in innumerable ways. 

There is an abstract way of thinking about the 
Son of God which is hurrying some of us into Pan- 
theism, and multitudes partake of the effect who are 
not in the least alive to the cause. There is a popular 
way of thinking about the Son of God, which is 
hurrying us into • idolatry ; and parents are startled at 
seeing their children fall over a precipice, to the edge of 
which they have walked under their guidance. Nor do 
I see how either evil can be averted if we do not more 
earnestly consider what is involved in the faith of our 
infancy ; whether the name of the Son into which we 
are baptized is not our redemption from all vagueness, 
and from all partial, separate, self-seeking worship, a 
witness that we are adopted into Him as members of 
His body, and must therefore seek the things that are 
above, where He sitteth at the right hand of God. This 
faith is not notional, but practical ; not for this and 
that man, but for mankind. If we were forced to form 
conceptions about a Son of God, or Son of Man, there 
would be a perpetual strife of intellects ; there could be 
no consent ; each man must think differently from his 
neighbour, must try to establish his own thought 
against his neighbour's. If He is revealed to us as the 
ground of our intellects — the creative Word of God from 
whom they derive their light : as the centre of our fellow- 



COMMUNICATION OF LIFE. 417 

ship, the only-begotten Son of God, in whom we are 
made sons of God ; the weary effort is over ; our 
thoughts may travel to the ends of the earth, but here 
is their home ; apart from Him men have infinite dis- 
agreements, in Him they have peace. 

III. A mere Fate or Necessity of course communicates 
no life or energy to those who are the subjects of it. 
Life and energy are excluded from the very idea of Neces- 
sity. A Euler or Lord of Nature may impart powers or 
energies to particular men. It will be the great sign of 
his favouring them above others that he does so. A free 
and imaginative people like the Greeks would account 
it a much greater proof of a man's being dear to the 
Gods that he was able to perform rare achievements, 
and exhibit unusual wit and prowess, than that he pos- 
sessed houses and land, and an outward good fortune. 
High gifts were felt, as I showed before, to indicate 
an Inspirer, and that Inspirer was acknowledged to 
have descended from the highest God. Here, again, 
the name of Father greatly modified the previous belief. 
The gift or Inspiration was generally taken as an 
evidence that the man who received it stood in some 
real relation to the Divine Power ; it was not merely 
bestowed from choice or favouritism, it was a kind of 
inheritance. 

The moment a Will drives out a Fate, an absolute will 
to good, mere irresistible decrees, the belief that this Will 
must seek to make other wills like its own, forces itself 

E E 



418 THE DIVINE ESSENCE. 

upon us. " This is the will of God, even your sanc- 
tification," becomes the deepest conviction of the reason. 

At first these words may be reflected on with much 
inward satisfaction, without any great awe. But when 
a man remembers that holiness, in its fullest sense, 
holiness as involving truth and love by involving sepa- 
ration from what is false and unlovely, must be the 
innermost nature of God, he may well wonder and 
tremble while he hears that this is what it is the will 
of God to make him partaker of. This gift is so amazing, 
so essential, that he is utterly baffled when he tries to 
meditate how he can ever be possessed of it. Can he be- 
come a God ? While he dreamed of God as a being of 
mere power, he might dream also of measuring his own 
power with His. But as soon as the belief of God's 
hoKness has at all entered into him, his desire is 
to sink rather than to rise. The consciousness of his 
pride is that which alarms him most. And that pride 
haunts him perpetually. If he became the most abject 
of men, he feels as if he should be proud of that ab- 
jectness — more proud than he had ever been before. 
This is a perplexity concerning himself ; there is another 
concerning God. It is wonderful that the inmost life 
of God should be communicated ; but it would be a con- 
tradiction that it should not be communicated. We 
cannot think of a Being of perfect love as wrapt up in 
Himself, as dwelling in the contemplation of His own 
excellence and perfection ; we can as little think of 



LOVE MUST HAVE AN OBJECT. 419 

His being satisfied with any lower excellence or per- 
fection. The belief of a Spirit proceeding from the 
Father and the Son, meets both the human and the 
divine difficulty. To think of the Father resting in the 
Son, in the deepest sense knowing the Son, and of the 
Son knowing the Father, we must think of a uniting 
Spirit. And if there is such a Spirit, it must be capable 
of being imparted ; that must be the way in which 
holiness is imparted. And if this gift comes to men 
through the Son, we are sure that the Spirit which 
they receive must be the Spirit of lowliness, and meek- 
ness, and obedience. We are sure that it cannot be a 
Spirit which exalts any one man above his fellow. It 
must bring all to a level. In so far as they confess it 
to be the Spirit of a Father, they must confess that it is 
meant to make them Sons of God ; in so far as they 
confess that it is the Spirit of Christ, they confess that 
it is meant to make them brothers. But the more this 
Spirit quickens them, the more they will delight to own 
it as distinct from them ; the more our Lord's words 
respecting a Comforter will seem to them the truest and 
fullest of all ; the more they will be compelled to feel 
that there is a Divine Person with them to whom they 
owe reverence and worship. 

So wonderfully — if our baptismal faith is true — are 
Divinity and Humanity blended ; so awfully are they 
distinguished. Each step in the revelation of the distinct 
Persons comes out to meet and satisfy some infinite need 

E E 2 



420 UNITY. 

of man ; some witness which has been awakened within 
him of his own grandeur, and of his own weakness ; of 
his belonging to a society, and of his being an individual; 
of his dwelling in a world, subject to all the accidents 
of time ; of his right to a state that is free from these 
accidents. The more near he is brought to God, the 
greater he feels is the necessity for adoration and wor- 
ship ; while he contemplates Him at a distance there is 
terror, but not reverence or awe. 

And it is equally true that while he beholds Him at a 
distance from himself, as the heathen did, and as we are 
always prone to do, there can be no acknowledgment of 
His Unity. As long as a Jove, or some Lord of Nature is 
worshipped, he must be divided into a multitude of forms. 
The conception of such a being shows what a need the 
heart and reason have of Unity, but also how impossible 
it is for them to find it, or create it for themselves. The 
multitude of forms which we behold in the world will 
make, in spite of all reasonings and theories, a multitude 
of world-gods ; it is only when we ask in wonder 
whence we ourselves are ; to what law we are subject ; 
in whom it is that we are living, and moving, and having 
our being ; who is guiding us ; whither he would lead us ; 
that we begin to escape from darkness into light, from 
division into Unity. When the Gospel was preached, 
when the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost was uttered, when men had been baptized into 
it, idols fell down ; the worship of the visible became 



DIVISION OF THE NAME. 421 

intolerable ; the sense of Unity profound. The separa- 
tion of that name has been in all ages since the secret of 
division, the commencement of idolatry. If we watched 
our own minds more we should find that it is so with 
them. We have sometimes fancied we would dwell 
simply on the thought of a Father; all others should 
be discarded as unnecessary. But soon it has not been 
a Father we have contemplated, it has been a mere sub- 
stratum of the things we saw, a name under which we 
collected them. How rejoiced is the heart to pass from 
such a cold void to the thought of a Son filled with all 
human sympathies ! But how soon does the sin-sick 
soul frame a thousand images and pictures of its own 
as a substitute for the perfect Image ; dream of Media- 
tors closer and more gracious than the One who died for 
all ! What a relief to fly from these fancies to a Divine 
Spirit! How we wonder that we should ever have 
thought that God could be anywhere but in the con- 
trite heart and pure ! Alas, the heart does not long 
remain contrite and pure ! Its holiness disappears : then 
the Object of its worship disappears ; for that Object was 
becoming more and more itself. And the man either is 
content with that miserable condition, and amuses him- 
self with high phrases about humanity to hide the facts 
of it from his own conscience ; or he asks for some 
mortal to tell him what he should believe, because he 
discovers that he has come to believe nothing. 

He will find many ready to meet that craving. He 



422 ETERNAL LIFE. 

will hear voices saying to him, " To what a condition 
yon have rednced yonrself by forsaking the one safe 
guide, the only teacher who can enable yon to obtain 
Eternal Life. For does not Christ say that we can only 
obtain eternal life by knowing God and Him? And 
what knowledge, what certainty, have yon on these 
subjects ? How can you get that certainty unless there 
is an infallible guide who will say to you, ' This is true ; 
believe it.' " If I wanted evidence to convince myself 
or any one else that, from such teachers as these, at all 
events, we can get no help, this would be sufficient. For 
the argument begins with assuming our Lord to have 
uttered words which he never did utter, and which 
directly set at nought the deep and awful words which 
came out of His lips in the prayer which He offered to 
His Father for His disciples, and for all who should 
believe in Him through their word. He did not say, 
' Men obtain eternal life by knowing God ;' but, ' This 
is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' The 
knowledge does not procure the life, but the knowledge 
constitutes the life. 

We fancy we attach a distinct meaning to these words, 
Eternal Life ; they are such precious and wonderful 
words, that every one tries to form some notion of them. 
But surely if there is any subject on which we want a 
guide, an infallible guide, it is on this. We feel that 
we are under a law of change and succession, that we 



ETERNITY AND TIME DISTINCT. 423 

live in days, and months, and years. We feel also that 
we have to do with that which is not changeable, which 
cannot be represented by any divisions of time. A long 
life, the poet says, may be curdled into an hour. Every 
great and serious event of our lives has taught us that 
this is so. We experience the utter vanity and empti- 
ness of chronology as a measure of suffering, of thought, 
of hope, of love. All these belong to another state of 
things. We perceive that Scripture is speaking to us 
of that state of things ; that it is educating us into the 
apprehension of it. The more we attend to the New 
Testament, the more we find to confirm the witness of 
our reason, that eternity is not a lengthening out or 
continuation of time; that they are generically differ- 
ent ; as St. Paul so beautifully expresses it, ' that which 
we see is temporal ; that which we do not see is eternal.' 
The spiritual world — we are obliged to confess it in a 
thousand ways — is not subject to temporal conditions. 
This is no discovery of philosophers. Every peasant 
knows it as well as Newton. If you have listened with 
earnestness to the questions of a child, you may often 
think that it knows more of eternity than time. The suc- 
cession of years confounds it ; it mixes the dates which it 
has been instructed in most strangely ; but its intuition of 
something which is beyond all dates makes you marvel. 
Scripture, in like manner, illustrates and makes clear 
our own thoughts about life and death. It teaches us 
to think of the healthy activity of all our powers and 



424 Christ's definition. 

perceptions, and their direction to their right object, as 
the living state ; the torpor of these, or their concentra- 
tion on themselves, as a state of death. 

With these hints, which every day's reading of the 
Scriptures, "by an earnest student, will multiply and 
expand, what need we have of some direct words to 
bring together the two thoughts of Eternity and of 
Life. If I spoke of defining Eternal Life, I should 
feel, and I think all would feel, that I was using 
an improper word ; for how can we define that which 
is out of the limits of time? But in the depth 
of prayer and communion with His Father, our Lord 
gives us that which corresponds to the most accurate 
and divine definition, one which we are bound hence- 
forth, if we reverence His authority, to apply on all 
occasions, and to use as the correction of our loose 
and vague conceptions. Instead of picturing to our- 
selves some future bliss, calling that eternal life, and 
determining the worth of it by a number of years, or 
centuries, or millenniums, we are bound to say once for 
all: This is the eternal life, that which Christ has 
brought with Him, that which we have in Him, the 
knowledge of God ; the entering into His mind and 
character, the knowing Him as we only can know any 
person, by sympathy, fellowship, love. And so the 
meaning and order of the Divine revelation becomes 
evident to us ; Grod has been declaring Himself to us 
that we might know Him, because He would have 



EOMANIST PERVERSION. 425 

us partakers of this eternal life. And this final Kevela- 
tion, that which is expressed in our Baptismal name, 
tells us what all the experience of ourselves and of the 
world tells us also, that unless the Spirit of the Father 
and the Son were with us, we could not break loose from 
the fetters of Time, the confusions of Sense, the narrow- 
ness of selfishness ; that if we yield to that Spirit we can 
have fellowship with those who are nigh and those who 
are far off ; with men of every habit, colour, opinion ; 
with those whom the veil of flesh divides from us ; with 
Him who is the Perfect Charity ; with the Father and 
the Son who dwell in the Unity of one blessed and 
eternal Spirit.* 

* As the remark in this passage on Romanist arguers applies directly 
to the Sermons of Mr. Manning's, to which I alluded in a former Essay, 
I cannot let it go forth without saying, that I entirely acquit him of 
that which would be a great sin, the intention of interpolating our 
Lord's words. I can quite conceive that vehement opponents of 
Rome have read the Sermons, without discovering that flaw in them. 
For the truth is, that we adopt this paraphrase as much as the Roman- 
ists do. Mr. Manning probably learnt it among English divines, and is 
making fair use of it against them now. What I hoped and believed 
was, that he had risen out of such a low notion of orthodoxy, to what- 
ever society it belongs. In the fourth volume of his Sermons, published 
shortly before he left the English Church, there was such a vein of 
true Catholicity, such an assertion of the highest Theology as the pos- 
session for all men, such a vindication of the truth that the knowledge 
of God is Eternal Life, as it did one's heart good to meet with anywhere. 
Though there were sufficient indications in that volume, that the writer 
might not stay very long amongst us, I could not help hailing it as a far 
nobler addition to the stores of English divinity, than those very exqui- 
site, probably more popular, but it seemed to me less masculine, dis- 
courses which Mr. Manning had put forth previously. I ventured to 
hope — almost to prophesy — that he might only be breaking the fetters of 
our Anglican system, and that even the new fetters of Romanism would 



426 MILTON ON TIME. 

not hinder him from being Catholic. Alas ! the messengers of Pius IX., 
as of Leo X., must offer eternal life to the highest bidder. The one may 
have his vulgar and blasphemous Tetzel to advertise it at a fixed money 
price to German reprobates ; the other may have his refined and accom- 
plished gentlemen to set it before care-worn, pleasure-sated Belgra- 
vians as the pay for so much faith in his decrees. But the principle is 
the same, and the coarse agent, on the whole, does less harm, because 
he rouses the conscience and heart of Christian men against him. 

In illustration of what I have said on the generical distinction between 
Time and Eternity, I should wish my readers to meditate these lines 
of Milton. 

" Fly, envioiis Time, till thou run out thy race ; 

Call on the lazy, leaden-stepping hours, 

Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace ; 

And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, 

Which is no more than what is false and vain, 

And merely mortal dross : 

So little is our loss, 

So little is thy gain. 

For when, as each thing bad thou hast intomb'd, 

And last of all thy greedy self consumed, 

Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss 

With an individual kiss ; 

And joy shall overtake us as a flood, 

When everything that is sincerely good 

And perfectly divine, 

With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine 

About the supreme throne 

Of Him to whose happy-making sight alone 

When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb 

Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 

Attired with stars we shall for ever sit 

Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, Time." 



CONCLUSION. 

ETERNAL LIFE AND ETERNAL DEATH. 

Many Unitarians still think as their fathers did, that 
the idea of a Trinity involves an utter contradiction — 
that every rational man must reject it. Many of them 
are aware that some of the deepest minds in the world 
have felt that the acknowledgment of a Trinity was 
necessary to their reason. But they are careful to 
observe that it is not this Trinity of which we speak ; 
if they should ever come to accept a Trinity as a portion 
of their belief they would still, they say, not be stooping 
to a creed. That act would be a sign of Progress, not 
of retrogression ; they would welcome a discovery of 
philosophy) not surrender themselves to a religious 
tradition. 

I have addressed myself in the last Essay very little 
to this state of feeling, though I have not been indifferent 
to it or unobservant of it. I have not produced the tes- 
timonies of philosophers, or chosen philosophical forms 
of expression, that I might make the doctrine look 
respectable. I have not shrunk from stating it in the 
broad, simple terms in which it appears in our baptismal 



428 THE WORSHIP OF ONE GOD. 

formula, or in the creed which interprets that formula. 
This I have done for the sake as much of those who 
believe that the worship of the One God is incompatible 
with the belief of a Trinity, as for those who would, in 
some sense, append that belief to their old worship. I 
have no wish to argue with the former class about the 
reasonableness of my faith — to offer evidence in support 
either of my sanity or my honesty. Whether I am 
forcing myself to say that which I do not believe, in 
compliance with the fictions of past ages, the custom 
of my country, and the dictates of self-interest,— or 
whether I have persuaded myself that belief and reason 
are mortal foes, and that one must always be given up 
for the sake of the other, — are questions of considerable 
importance to me, but of exceedingly little to them. 

Still less have I any wish to persuade them that their 
zeal for the name of the Father, or for the Unity of God, 
was an extravagant or unnecessary zeal. May God 
increase it in them ten thousand fold ! It is not their 
zeal I fear, but their indifference ; not their grasp of 
their own convictions, but their inclination to use them 
merely as weapons against that which they suppose other 
people to hold. While we use the doctrine of the Trinity 
in that way, I am certain we shall not believe it, what- 
ever we may pretend. While they think that they know 
what that awful name ' Father ' signifies because they 
can pronounce it, or what that wonderful word Unity 
means because they can fight for it, they will not only not 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRINITY. 429 

enlarge the circle of their convictions, but they will lose 
those that they have. Let them pray the Lord's prayer, 
determining that the first words of it shall not be mere 
words to them — that they shall be such as sick people 
want who sigh for the morning ; as poor men want who 
toil in mines ; as captives want who are chained together 
in loathsome prisons ; and I have no fear of their coming 
to acknowledge the whole name which we confess. Let 
them sigh for that Unity which all the strifes and 
divisions of the world are rending, and I have no fear of 
their coming to pray to, as well as for, a Spirit of Unity, 
or that their prayer will take the form of the old hymn 
of which we have this simple and noble version : — 

Teach, us to know the Father, Son, 
And Thee of both to be but one ; 
That through the ages all along 
This may be our endless song — 
Praise to thy eternal merit, 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

And to turn for a moment to you, my Platonical 
friends, I do think that if Plato, whom I honour and 
love as much as you can, were among us at this hour, 
that old hymn would be as dear to him as I know that 
it has been to pure true hearts, untrained in philosophy, 
and entirely free from all religious show and affectation, 
on their dying beds. I think he would prize it, because 
it united him to them, and because he would have seen 
this to be a test of Truth which a seeker of wisdom 
must hail, that it did not take the form of a notion 



430 PLATO AND PLATONISTS. 

which he had shaped out for himself, but presented 
itself to his humble fellow-creatures as a firm resting- 
place. His pseudo-disciples in the Roman Empire 
used a different test from this — the very opposite one. 
The highest divinity was with them, that which was 
most remote from the sympathies and apprehensions of 
ordinary men ; that which only the exalted, theoretic 
man could take any cognisance of. Of course, Creeds 
and a Gospel were detestable in their eyes ; what could 
be so profane as the doctrine that the people had any- 
thing to do with a Trinity ? TJtey could only be told 
of secondary demons ; they must see everything through 
the shapes and forms of earth. 

I am too well aware, how ready this exclusive, self- 
exalting temper is to take shapes very different from 
that which it took in the hands of the Neo-Platonists, 
and how much some of these shapes have tormented the 
Church, not to be afraid of evoking one devil, while I 
am seeking to lay another. When Christians have 
asserted, and Philosophers have agreed, that they are 
speaking of two different subjects while they use the 
same name, both are in danger of becoming technical 
and unreal. If the Trinity which Christ has revealed 
is a truth, it must be a truth for mankind. If the 
Trinity which Philosophers have discovered is a truth, 
it must be a truth for mankind. The real difference 
must be this : In Christ the Trinity is revealed sub- 
stantially. It is not a doctrine, unless it is more than 



THE EOAD TO TKUTH. 431 

a doctrine. Either real Persons are declared to us, or 
nothing is declared about those Persons. Either a real 
Unity is declared, or nothing is made known to us about 
a Unity. If a God is not discovered in whom we are 
living, and moving, and having our being, the mystery 
of ourselves, and of our relation to God, so far as Chris- 
tianity is concerned, is still as dark as ever. Supposing 
philosophy to have perceived a Trinity, or the shadow, 
or the hint of one, it cannot be a mere perception which it 
can appropriate to itself — any more than Gravitation is 
a truth which Newton could appropriate to himself. 
The philosopher must ask to what reality the perception 
or intuition corresponds ; of what substance that which 
he sees is the shadow. No one is bound to assume the 
position of a philosopher ; few have any call to assume 
it ; but supposing any man becomes one, this must be 
the condition of his work : — he must seek for that which 
is human and universal; for truth itself, not for some 
image of it or some logical formula that defines it. And 
he must ask .how truth in this sense — truth as the equi- 
valent of substance or being, can be made known, so 
that all shall be partakers of it. I leave that thought to 
the modern Unitarian philosopher. I would not have 
him abandon his task, if he thinks that he is appointed 
to it. 1 would have him pursue it steadily. For I 
believe, by that road too — though if I may judge by 
the very little experience I have had of it, one full of 
hollows and quagmires — he may be led back to our 



432 ETERNAL DEATH. 

Father, may meet his brethren who have started from 
a different point, and have encountered other dangers, 
and may be brought into that true Unity which 
he has seen afar off, which he once thought that he 
possessed. 



Here, then, I might stop, for I have reached — not the 
highest point to which an aspiring Christian student can 
ascend — but that deepest ground which the student has 
been feeling after, and which, when he finds it, proves 
just as firm footing for every child and beggar as 
for him. But here I cannot stop; for some words 
which I have dropped in the course of this Essay 
suggest one of the most serious and tremendous ques- 
tions with which men of any age can be occupied, and 
the one which is proved by a thousand indications to be 
especially occupying this age. I have spoken of Eternal 
Life; what is Eternal Death? Dare we think of it? 
Must we not try, in some way, to evade the considera- 
tion of it, — to explain away the words of Scripture, 
which suggest it to us? 



THE 39 ARTICLES ; THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 433 

Unitarians have tried to explain them away. A num- 
ber of the most wise, devout, excellent men living now, 
or that have lived, in our own Church, and among the 
Dissenters, have shrunk from them. We have the 
testimony of persons very competent to speak, from the 
extent and variety of their experience, whose veracity is 
unquestionable, that multitudes of the upper classes are 
scared into infidelity by them. They furnish, as many 
clergymen in metropolitan parishes know, some of the 
most plausible and effective arguments against Chris- 
tianity, to those who lecture among the lower classes. 
Again and again, one finds earnest and devout persons 
asking how they can reconcile them with that Gospel 
of God's Love ; which they must hold fast, whatever 
else they part with. 

Coincident with these observations, there are others 
which are equally startling in the opposite way. It 
seems as if divines, good and earnest men, were anxious 
to get a much more formal and distinct assertion of the 
doctrine of Everlasting Punishment than the older Con- 
fessions supply. Our Reformers having introduced an 
Article upon it into the Forty-two which were originally 
drawn up for the use of the English Church, omitted 
that Article in the Thirty-nine. For some reason or 
other, they judged it more right and more safe, even in 
so complete a compendium as that — intended for the 
student and the guide of others — not to put forth 
a dogmatic statement on this subject. On the con- 
F F 



434 SCRIPTURE TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. 

trary, the Evangelical Alliance, trying to invent a com- 
prehensive and loving formula, which might embrace 
all Protestants who could, "by possibility, fraternize 
with each other — anxious to avoid mere formalities 
which could cause disagreement — not finding the Apo- 
stles' Creed wide enough for their expansive sympathies 
— have framed nine Articles, one of which expressly 
canonizes the doctrine that appears to afflict the con- 
sciences of so many. 

Though I certainly esteem the wisdom of those who 
compiled our Articles much more than that of those who 
have established the Evangelical Alliance, I am far 
from denying that they had an excellent motive for the 
course which they have adopted. I believe, with them, 
that we must take the words of Scripture literally. I 
think, as they do, that we have not taken them too lite- 
rally. I entirely yield to the opinion that the subject, 
however awful, is not one which can be passed by with 
safety, as if the faith and the well-being of multitudes 
were not at stake. But I venture to question whether 
the popular notions on the subject, which they seem 
inclined to settle into articles of faith (just as, accord- 
ing to some, the Council of Trent confirmed into articles 
of faith so much of what had been merely the floating 
Romish opinion), do correspond to the words from 
which they seem to be deduced. 

Universalists have tried to put a different force on 
the word eternal when it is applied to life, and when 



UNIFORM SENSE OF THE WORD c ETERNAL.' 435 

it is applied to death or to punishment. On plain grounds 
of philological honesty, I have always protested against 
this distinction. I have been ashamed of our translators 
for the apparent encouragement they have given to it 
by using the two words, * eternal,' and ' everlasting,' 
in the last verse of the twenty -fifth chapter of St. Mat- 
thew. But I feel the theological objection to this course 
quite as serious as the other. Instead of thinking that 
I gained something for humanity or for Christianity 
if I got rid of the word ' eternal ' in either case, I 
should feel the loss quite unspeakable. I have no motive 
therefore for yielding to the arguments which an inge- 
nious and pious essayist of our day (who, I believe, has 
done good, and not harm, by forcing this subject so 
solemnly and earnestly on the attention of divines) has 
drawn from the fact that our Lord's words were deli- 
vered in Syriac, and only reported in Greek. I cannot 
attach any practical weight to that observation. It seems 
to me that the Greek language does not suffer in the 
hands of the New Testament writers, as an organ of 
spiritual communication, from its not being their own 
language, but that the inner life of the words, — that 
which is involved in their etymology, and which is 
forgotten in the customary use of them, — presented itself 
in all its power, to those who were awkward in managing 
their outward and secondary applications. I attribute 
their faculty of perception to the education of the Holy 
Spirit; but in this, as in all His operations, He was, 
F F 2 



436 DEATH ETERNAL. 

I conceive, exhibiting and carrying out a law, not sus- 
pending one. 

I think this hint respecting the New Testament lan- 
guage deserves to be reflected on ; still I would not rest so 
important a case as the present upon it. The word' eternal,' 
if what I have said is true, is a key-word of the New 
Testament. To draw our minds from the temporal, to fix 
them on the eternal, is the very aim of the divine economy. 
How much ought we, then, to dread any confusion be- 
tween thoughts which our Lord has taken such pains to 
keep distinct, — which our consciences tell us ought to be 
kept distinct! How dangerous to introduce the notion of 
duration into a word from which He has deliberately 
excluded it ! And yet this is precisely what we are in 
the habit of doing, and it is this which causes such infi- 
nite perplexity to our minds. ' Try to conceive,' the 
teacher says, * a thousand years. Multiply these by a 
thousand, by twenty thousand, by a hundred thousand, 
by a million. Still you are as far off from eternity as 
ever.' Certainly I am, quite as far. Why then did 
you give me that sum to work out? What could be 
the use of it, except to bewilder me, except to make me 
disbelieve in Eternity altogether? Do you not see that 
this course must be utterly wrong and mischievous? 
If Eternity is the great reality of all, and not a por- 
tentous fiction, how dare you impress such a notion of 
fictitiousness on my mind as your process of illustration 
conveys? 'But is it not the only process?' — Quite 



THEY DID IT NOT TO THE LEAST OF THESE. 437 

the only one, so far as I see, if you will bring Time 
into the question ; if you will have years, and centuries, 
to prevent you from taking in the sublime truth, ' This 
is life eternal, to know God.' 

For what, then, is Death Eternal, but to be without 
God? "What is that infinite dread which rises upon 
my mind, which I cannot banish from me, when I think 
of my own godlessness and lovelessness, — that I may 
become wholly separated from Love ; become wholly im- 
mersed in selfishness and hatred ? What dread can I have 
— ought I to have — besides this ? What other can equal 
this ? Mix up with this, the consideration of days and 
years and millenniums, you add nothing either to my 
comfort or my fears. All you do is to withdraw me from 
the real cause of my misery, which is my separation from 
the source of life and peace ; from the hope which must 
come to me in one place or another, if I can again 
believe in God's love, and cast myself upon it. 

Our Lord speaks of those who would not minister to 
Him when He was sick and in prison, and naked, as 
going away into eternal punishment, and then explains 
the neglect of His brethren to be neglect of Him. 
The Righteous, that is, those who owned Him in the 
least of them, He says, will go into Life Eternal. For 
— we must recur to His own words — 'this is Life Eter- 
nal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.' The eternal Life 
is the perception of His love, the capacity of loving ; no 



438 PUNISHMENT, AND LOSS OF PUNISHMENT. 

greater reward can be attained by any, no higher or 
diviner security. The eternal punishment is the loss of 
that power of perceiving His love, the incapacity of 
loving : no greater damnation can befal any. And yet, 
as long as that word ' punishment ' is used — as long as 
it is represented as the act of a Father, — the heart 
discovers — cannot help discovering — a hope even in this 
deprivation. Nations — and our Lord here, if we take 
His words literally, speaks of Nations — have undergone 
that awful sentence of losing all, or almost all, sense of 
God, — of being given up to Devil-worship, and yet they 
have risen out of it. Even Israel, — the sins of which are 
heaviest, the exclusion of which has been so awfully an 
exclusion from spiritual blessings — from the knowledge 
of God Himself,-— we trust is still only under punishment; 
will at last be saved. But there is a vision, as I have 
heard so often from Evangelical preachers, and Scripture 
and Conscience confirm their words, far more fearful 
than the vision of punishment ; that of being left alone; 
of being permitted to be out of discipline — to have our 
own way. That is a thought of unspeakable horror, 
and it is one from which no person who knows the 
depths and capacities of his own will, and the resistance 
it offers to God, can be always free. It will return 
to him again and again. It comes to him, not from 
the Gospel, but from himself. The Gospel of God 
is the only emancipation from it. The moment he ap- 
prehends the message of God and bows to it, the moment 



SEARCH FOR A PURGATORY. 439 

he acknowledges Hini as being what He is, that moment 
he comes into a new state; the thick darkness has 
passed away; he is no longer under a sentence of death, 
"because he believes in God, and not in the Devil ; be- 
cause he walks in the light as He is in the light ; con- 
fesses the truth, and not a lie. 

And therefore it becomes altogether a most solemn 
question how we put this contrast of life eternal and 
death eternal, in our meditations with ourselves, and in 
our discourses to others. The question is not, whether 
we are to make the contrast less tremendous than it is 
represented to be in Scripture. We cannot do that. 
Hatred, the opposition to God, the devil-nature, must be 
infinitely more frightful in the eyes of God, than we can 
picture it to ourselves. All the experiences we have 
had of such a state, must impress us with more fear 
than any words or sensible images possibly can. The 
point to be considered is, whether many of our popular 
theological statements, whether especially the terms in 
which we speak of eternal death, do not make men 
indifferent to evil, either present or future, first, by set- 
ting before them other terrors as greater than that; 
next, by shutting out from them the perfect Goodness 
which can alone enable them to understand what that 
is, and which only can deliver them from it. 

It cannot be denied that men are escaping to Rome 
in search of a purgatory, because they see in that, some 
token that God is merciful to His creatures, that the 



440 DEFINITIONS KEJECTED, 

whole mass of human beings in our streets and alleys, 
whom we have overlooked and neglected, nineteen 
hundredths of the population of all the Continental 
countries, most of the American Slaves, besides the 
whole body of Turks, Hindoos, Hottentots, Jews, will 
not sink for ever, in a short time, into hopeless 
destruction, from which a few persons, some of whom 
are living comfortably, eating their dinners and riding 
in their carriages without any vexation of heart, may, 
by special mercy, be delivered. They say this is the 
meaning of what they have been told in the land where 
a Gospel is said to be preached, where Bibles are 
distributed in every village. They say that a Church 
which gives them a hope that this is not so, that 
the threescore years and ten do not absolutely limit 
the compassion of the Father of Spirits, must be better 
than the one in which they have been bred. Oh ! 
that such words should be spoken, and should be be- 
lieved; that w T e should be supposed to have gained 
nothing by three centuries of emancipation from the 
yoke of Rome but the loss of faith and hope in God, — 
but a more assured perdition, a more utter despair ! Let 
us hasten to wipe off this foul disgrace, to show in deed 
and in truth that it does not belong to us. We have 
renounced, indeed, all notion of defining the limits of 
purgatory. We know that in the strictest- sense this 
world is a purgatory, that there are fires here for burn- 
ing up the dross and refining the pure ore. We have 



NOT NEW DEFINITIONS INTRODUCED. 441 

renounced the "blasphemous notion of paying so much 
to God for bringing souls out of the condition which 
belongs to them. We have not instituted prayers for 
the dead, for Christ has said, that God is not the God 
of the dead, but of the living, since all live to Him. We 
have rejected idle fancies about places where spirits may 
be dwelling; for what do we know of them, or what 
have they to do with us and with those we love ? But 
how dare we define God ? How dare we say that Christ 
is not the Lord of both worlds? How can we check 
the Spirit of Love, who bids us pray ' for all men,' or 
tell Him that the prayer must be limited by barriers 
of space and time, which Christ has broken down? 
And into what blasphemy does this notion lead us ! 
We, poor, selfish, miserable creatures, desire the sal- 
vation and well-being of this and that fellow-creature, 
of Jews, Turks, infidels, heretics ; so we are more loving 
than the God of Love ! We are desiring a good for man 
which He does not desire. Our prayers are not sacrifices, 
not surrenders of our partial, unholy wills to His perfect 
and holy Will, but struggles with Him to grant that 
which He has determined to refuse ! 

And what are we doing with that high and holy office 
of judgment which we assign to Christ ? He speaks of 
few stripes and many stripes: He makes us feel that 
there will be the most accurate and just assertion of 
what each man is ; the most righteous vindication of 
every wish, and thought, and hope, that has been true, 



442 god's love larger than theories. 

and that has therefore sprung from Him ; the most 
righteous condemnation of that which is false wherever 
it is found. And we, under pretence of interpreting the 
text, ' Where the tree falleth, it shall lie,' — which ap- 
parently has very little to do with the subject ; but if it 
has, suggests the most opposite sense to this, — affirm 
that the whole body of human creatures who have not 
yet apprehended Christ as their Justifler, and God as 
their Father, pass from hence into a state in which that 
apprehension is impossible. "We, and not Christ, are 
judging! And our judgment proceeds on the principle that 
there is no living relation between Him and the crea- 
tures whose nature He took, and for whom He died. 

This cannot be Protestantism, cannot be Christianity. 
Let us Englishmen live and die to assert that it is not. 
We do not want theories of Universalism ; they are as 
cold, hard, unsatisfactory, as all other theories. But we 
want that clear, broad assertion of the Divine Charity 
which the Bible makes, and which carries us immea- 
surably beyond all that we can ask or think. What 
dreams of ours can reach to the assertion of St. John, 
that Death and Hell themselves shall be cast into the 
lake of fire? I cannot fathom the meaning of such 
expressions. But they are written ; I accept them, and 
give thanks for them. I feel there is an abyss of Death, 
into which I may sink, and be lost. Christ's Gospel 
reveals an abyss of Love, below that ; I am content to be 
lost in that. I know no more, but I am sure that there 



THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 443 

is a woe on us if we do not preach this Gospel, if we 
do not proclaim the name of the Father, the Son, and 
the Spirit, — the Eternal Charity. Whenever we do 
proclaim that Name, I believe we invade the realm of 
Night and Eternal Death, and open the kingdom of 
Heaven. 



NOTE. 

It may seem to some of my readers, that an Essay on the Trinity, 
as well as on Eternal Life and Death, ought to have been accompa- 
nied with some statements respecting the Athanasian Creed. Eleven 
years ago I expressed what were then my opinions on that subject, 
in a book not addressed to Unitarians. I said that I could not 
agree with Mr. Coleridge in thinking that this Creed contradicted the 
Mcene, on the subject of the subordination of the Son to the Father ; 
that, if it forced me to pronounce judgment on any person, I would 
not have laid myself under the obligation of reading it — whatever 
Church might adopt it — because I should be violating an express com- 
mand of Christ ; that I never had felt myself encouraged or tempted 
by it to pass sentence on those who differed with me most on the sub- 
ject of Trinity; that, on the contrary, I had felt it was passing sentence 
on my own tendencies ' to confound the Persons, and to divide the 
Substance ;' that these tendencies in me, I knew, had nothing to do with 
intellectual formulas, but with moral corruptions, from which many 
who are called heretics, may be freer than I am ; that I doubted 



444 THE ATH AN ASIAN CREED. 

whether we should gain in Truth or Charity by casting away this 
Creed, because I looked upon it as a witness, that eternal life is the 
knowledge of God, and that eternal death is Atheism, the being 
without Him. * I have not seen any cause to alter these opinions. I 
feel indeed, that every year of fresh experience, as it should ground us 
more in principles, should make us more diffident of our own judgment 
on questions of expediency. Though the Creed, instead of tempting 
us to condemn others, has, I think, often overcome our inclination to 
condemn them — (for the more tremendous its language, the less we can 
dare fco bring any individual within the scope of it), though some 
sentences of it, those especially concerning 'the taking of the Manhood 
into God, the reasonable soul and flesh, the persons, and substance,' 
have thrown a clear broad light into dark passages of my mind, and I 
doubt not, have taught my brethren more; yet if it does cause any of 
those for whom Christ died to stumble, if it hinders any from entering 
into the mystery of God's love, I hope He will not suffer us to retain 
it. For that which is meant as a witness of Him, must be given up, 
like the brazen serpent, if it ceases to be so, or is made an instrument 
of turning men's eyes from Him. Still I cannot help thinking that 
the reasons generally urged for abandoning it are not charitable, and 
that submission to them will not conduce to charity. I find persons ob- 
jecting, first, that the basis of our fellowship should not be laid in 
Theology, in principles concerning the nature of God. Secondly, that 
Eternal Punishment or Death may be denounced against those who hold 
certain opinions on certain subjects — probably on the subject of the 
Trinity, — but should not be denounced against those who do not think 
* thus ' or ' thus ' concerning it. 
On the first proposition I have spoken much in these Essays, and 

* ' Kingdom of Christ, or Hints to a Quaker,' vol. ii. p. 548. 



THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 445 

have endeavoured to show that any basis of fellowship, but a Theolo- 
gical one — any basis of human consciousness, or of mere materialism — 
must be narrow and exclusive, one on which an edifice of superstition 
will certainly be reared, one which must be protected by persecution. 
On the second point I would observe, that if the Creed had meant that 
the not holding certain intellectual notions concerning the Trinity in- 
volved the penalty of everlasting death, it would consign to destruction, 
not heretics, — extreme or moderate, — but every peasant, every child, 
nearly every woman in every congregation in which it is read, seeing that 
these (thank God !) have formed no such intellectual conceptions, that 
the majority are not capable of forming them. And the few persons 
it would count worthy of eternal life, are a set of schoolmen, the best 
of whom pray every day and hour, that they may become as little 
children, and have the faith which those have, who do not look upon 
the subject from a logical point of view at all. Lastly, it would di- 
rectly contradict its own most solemn assertions. If we could compre- 
hend this triith in an intellectual statement, the Father would not be 
incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incom- 
prehensible. But since there is no alternative between this utterly 
monstrous imagination, and that which supposes the Creed to affirm the 
knowledge of God and eternal life to be the same ; and therefore the 
denial, — not in the letter, but in the spirit, — not intellectually and 
outwardly, but morally and inwardly, — of the Father, Son, and Spirit, 
to be eternal death, — I cannot help thinking that, with all its fierce 
language, it has a gentler heart than some of those who get themselves 
credit for Toleration, by wishing the Church well rid of it. Tliey leave 
us free to judge occasionally, to assume a portion of God's authority, 
only protesting against any excessive intrusion into it. The Creed 
obliges us to give such a meaning to eternal life — or rather to adhere 



446 THE ATHANASIAN CEEED. 

so closely to our Lord's explanation of it — that we have no power of 
saying, in any case, who has lost it, or incurred the state which is 
opposite to it. 

If I am asked whether the writer did not suppose that he had this 
power, I answer ; ' When you tell me who the writer was, I may pos- 
sibly, though probably not even then, be able to make some guess 
whether he supposed it or not. At present, I am quite in the dark 
about him and his motives. If I adopt the theory, which is as reason- 
able as any other, that he lived in the time of the Vandal persecution; 
I think it is very likely, that along with a much deepened conviction 
of the worth of the principle for which he was suffering, he had also a 
mixture of earthly passion and fierceness, and that he was tempted 
to show his opponents, or those who were apostatising, that there 
were more terrible penalties than those of scourging the back or cut- 
ting out the tongue. In that case, I should say I was giving up that 
part of his animus which he would wish me to give up : that part 
which was not of God, and could not be meant to abide ; and was 
clinging to that which made his other words true and consistent with 
themselves, when I interpreted his Creed in conformity with our 
Lord's sentence. I should not be imitating the treatment which Mr. 
Ward (in his Ideal of the Church) applied to our Articles, (I have no 
doubt he is one of those on whom Eomanism has conferred a benefit 
by making him at least respectful to the formularies by which he is 
bound), when he maintained that a non-natural sense might be put 
on them, because the compilers of them meant to cheat Catholics, and 
Catholics might pay them in their own coin. I should apply just the 
opposite rule. If I found a general scope of meaning which was 
important and precious, and which belonged to all times, I should not 
sacrifice that for the sake of a portion which belonged to the circum- 



THE ATHANASIAN CEEED. 447 

stances and feelings of a particular time or a particular man. To use 
Mr. Canning's celebrated simile, I should not follow the example of those 
worshippers of the Sun, who chose the moment of an eclipse to come 
forth with their hymns and their symbols. 

This rule is necessary, I suspect, that we may do justice to the 
Church of the Fathers generally, and prove our reverence for it. I can- 
not honour that age too much, for its earnestness in asserting and 
defending theological principles. I believe no other age has had 
precisely the same task committed to it. Of course, I have most sym- 
pathy with those (like him to whom this Creed is erroneously attributed) 
who fought at fearful odds for that which was dear to them, who ex- 
posed themselves to imperial, episcopal, and popular indignation, for 
the sake of it. It is not only more pleasant to contemplate them than 
the prosperous men, — and them in their adversity than when they were 
threatening and excommunicating others ; but their weak time was cer- 
tainly the time in which all their chief work was done. Nevertheless, I 
cannot say that their anathemas were indications of a cruel spirit, that 
these did not show, like their endurance of persecution, how much they 
were in earnest, and how precious the truths which they had realized 
were to them ; or that the distinctions which were the excuses for them 
were not very valuable for Theology and for Humanity. There, I believe, 
they were wiser than we are, unless we are willing to profit by their 
wisdom. But there are points on which I know we ought to be wiser 
than they were. They could not foresee how God would govern His 
world, what methods He would see fit to use for bringing His truth 
to light. We ought to see that doubts, questions, partial apprehensions, 
denials of one principle for the sake of affirming another, have been, 
through His gracious discipline, means of elucidating that which 
would otherwise have been dark. Would the sentence of the Nicene 



448 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 

Council have sufficed to illustrate the faith of Athanasius ? Was not 
a century of strife in the Empire — three centuries of Arianism among 
the Barbarians, — needful for that purpose ? And if I find this to be so, 
and find also much horrible sin among the orthodox mixed with 
their excellences, many virtues among the heretics mixed with their 
denials and contradictions, I am bound to believe God was using both. 
I dare not deny History any more than the Theological truth, which, 
I believe, History has expounded. That truth will suffer if I do. 
How was the noble heart of Dante crushed by the thought that his 
dear master, and all the men whom he reverenced in the old world, 
were outcasts, for not believing in the Trinity ! That thought evidently 
shook his faith in the Trinity. And it would shake mine, because it 
would lead me to suppose, that Truth only became true when Christ 
appeared, instead of being revealed by Him for all ages past and to 
come ; so that, whoever walked in the light then, whoever walks in it 
now, seeking glory and immortality, desirous to be true, has glimpses 
of it, and will have the fruition of it, which is Life Eternal. 

I have spoken of the possible animus of the writer of this Creed ; 
but I must repeat that I know nothing of him, and therefore my 
guesses are good for very little. The animus imponentis concerns us, 
as all casuists admit, much more ; and of that we have no right to pre- 
tend ignorance. Our Church has given us great helps for understanding 
what her meaning is, and what spirit she wishes us to be of. There 
is the negative help that she has not defined Eternal Life, leaving us 
to our Lord Himself as the true definer. There is the positive help, 
that she has inserted this Creed in the midst of prayers to the God of 
Truth and Charity, for His Spirit of Truth and Charity. So long as 
I am commanded to repeat those prayers, no one shall compel me to 
put a construction upon this formulary which contradicts them, and 



THE ATHANASIAN CREED. 449 

makes me consciously false in the use of them. And I will add once 
for all, in reference to those who wish to bind us by the current and 
floating opinions of this age, on the topics I have discussed in these 
Essays ; I hold to that which I have confessed already ; I hold to the 
prayers in which I find that confession made living and effectual for 
me and for all my brethren. If you say my faith is not distinct 
enough, bring forth your substitute for it. Do not talk about a perfect 
Atonement, or a divine Satisfaction, or an Eternal Death; these I 
believe in as much as you can do. Put forth distinctly before your own 
consciences, and before the conscience of England, the meaning which 
you attach to these words. See whether what you intend is not either 
that assertion of God's infinite Charity, which is contained in St. John's 
express words, in the whole Bible, in our forms, or something so fla- 
grantly in contradiction with that, as to make the duty of rejecting it, 
and protesting against it, one from which no Churchman and no man 
ought to shrink. 



THE END. 



o a 



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2. THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 

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4. MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

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